CA v. MENENDEZ (1993): Erik Menendez Takes the Stand | Trials OnDemand | COURT TV

please eric galen menendez i'll remind you you're still under oath and are you ready to proceed yes sir okay mr menendez when we broke yesterday we were talking about your mother's interactions with you over homework and schoolwork and learning do you remember that yes you mentioned at some point uh when we you were talking about that something about a closet yes would you tell us what significance a closet had with respect to your mother and to school work um that's where i did a lot of my schoolwork uh when i didn't do it well what's where you did it in her closet where was the closet um in her room it was a long very narrow long closet she kept a lot of her clothes and is that because you like to do school work in her closet you chose that as a place to do it no she put me there when she felt that i wasn't concentrating hard enough or i was having trouble concentrating or just wasn't doing it well enough to the how she liked or when she left the house and she felt i wasn't sick she wanted to make sure i did my work you said when she left the house and she felt you weren't sick what type of days or what time of day would that relate to uh that related to during the day late morning afternoon when she had left the house can you specify what time frame we're talking about yes what age or ages are we talking about when your mother would have you do work in the closet when i was 12 13 14. now the days when she'd leave the house and have you be in the closet with these weekends or school days the school days when she would leave the house it's when i was home sick but she didn't feel i was that sick and what was the purpose of you being if you know of you having to be in the closet on these school days when she was out of the house she wanted to make sure i didn't watch tv or do anything that i wasn't supposed to do and and made sure that i did my work so you were supposed to do homework in the closet homework or different uh different tests that she would give me or assignments that she would give me and was there a chair and a table or a desk in the closet no sometimes she'd give me a clipboard a clipboard so that i could write on and for how long a period of time would you have to remain in the closet after she had put you there until she let me out and how long would that sometimes be sometimes it would be an hour sometimes it would be all day when she left seven hours sometimes i fell asleep in there overnight and when apart from the days when she wasn't there and she put you in the closet where would she be on other occasions when she put you in the closet to do your schoolwork where would your mother be usually across the way on her bed in the same room yeah the closet was at the very back past the bathroom past my dad's closet down this teeny little hallway on her room and her bedroom would be on the other side of the room so she'd be in her bedroom i mean i couldn't tell where she was always but when i called out she was usually on her bed and did this closet have a solid door or a door you could look through i could peek through the bottom under under the door but it was a solid door and what would happen mr menendez if while you were in the closet and your mother was home you had to go to the bathroom um i wasn't supposed to go to the bathroom unless i called out and asked her if she wasn't home i'm talking about when she is homeless okay let's say she's there okay she's in her bedroom yes and you have to go to the bathroom yes what would you do i'd have to call out and tell her that i needed to go to the bathroom and would she then come let you out of the closet let you go to the bathroom uh defended depended on what on whether she felt like letting me go to the bathroom at that time she'd asked me what number i had to go and if i had to go number two usually she'd let me out and if you had in and the number one was urinating yes and if you had to do that would she let you out sometimes sometimes she would say i'll let you out in a few minutes or later or whatever did she ever provide you with a receptacle of some kind that you were supposed to use in the closet yes that's after i had complained that i couldn't you have to back off the mic try to sit back just sit back in the chair okay try to stay there okay go on the receptacle in the closet it was it was a plastic bin with a yellow cover it was a see-through um type of thing and what was it for it was for when i used to go to the bathroom that's after you had complained well i'd complained when she left the house she'd put me in the closet and i didn't know i couldn't leave the closet to go to the bathroom and she got very angry at me one time when i left the closet and i said i i used the excuse that i needed to go to the bathroom that time even though i didn't so she gave me a bin to go in if she wasn't at home how did she know that you left the closet to go to the bathroom whether you really went to the bathroom or it was just an excuse how did she know you left the closet she used to put this little piece of paper go ahead she used to put this little the microphone was too low that's why i can't um excuse manic a deputy wolf could we find a place where it will no it's just a volume she used to put this little piece of paper uh the corner of the closet door so the closet door opened from the outside the paper would fall down if it opened from the outside if it opened the paper would fall down the outside okay and so there was an occasion when you had left the closet and she found out yeah i didn't know this until after i found out on the second time what it was i had left the closet and i watched tv and i got something to eat and i used the restroom and i came back and she accused me leaving the closet and i said no i didn't and she grabbed me and she started shaking me and she said don't lie to me don't lie to me and uh and i didn't know how she knew but i admitted that i left the closet and the second time is when i saw the piece of paper the second time you left the closet when she wasn't home yes i didn't understand how she knew that i'd left the closet the first time um now did you use this receptacle that she provided yes did you ever use anything else i didn't enjoy using the i didn't really want to use this because i'd have to give a tour and so i kept a one of those plastic bags and the class hid it in the closet so when i had to go in there and i had to go to the bathroom i could use my own and i could pretend that i never went okay do you recall you testified two days ago that you are currently aware that there was strike that you remember that you were tested for uh hearing problems when you were in the sixth grade or so when you were about 13 yes and uh you remember testifying that you weren't told the results of that accurately by your mother at the time is that right no i wasn't and you now know that those tests showed that you had some problems yes what was your mother's reaction if any concerning your performance in the school work she was doing with you at home after that testing did it change in any way well she got a lot i started to do a lot more work i started to there was a lag in a period of time there was intense training before i got into pds for a few years and then it lagged off a little and then it and then it just came on again and she got a lot more intense about the work i was doing and how much work i was doing and so on my question though has to do with that testing of your hearing did your mother ever refer to the testing of your hearing when she was doing the school work with you yes how did she treat you after the hearing test as compared to before was there any difference yes what was the difference she would just yell at me a lot more and tell me that i was too stupid to understand and and uh just say a lot of a lot of things today did she say anything to you about the fact that you could hear okay yes well tell us that mr menendez you haven't told us that she would say she would say a lot of different things she would say that she usually said that i was just not bright enough but she would say that i had i had the the ability to hear and that i i was just not using my my brain that i wasn't using my intellect you would say you say why can't you understand me why can't you hear me she would get really frustrated and that was after the hearing test yes so was she more critical or less critical after the hearing test she was more critical now when you when you started at pds what grade did you start in i started in fifth grade and had you already done the fifth grade yes and where had you done it i had done it in hobo valley was hopewell valley a public school yes and in your opinion looking back um how did you do at hopewell valley school the public school i hadn't finished the question thank you as compared to how you did in school performance at pds um i thought i did pretty well at hopa and did you think you did pretty well at pds yes so you thought you did the same pds was a tougher school so in comparison i thought i did the same were your grades better at hopewell yes did you feel better about schoolwork and hope well you were doing better did you like getting good grades yes of course so were you happier with yourself and hope well or happier with yourself at pds pds was a lot tougher school and i didn't i didn't like it so much because so much pressure was put on by mom to get to get the grades because they let me in pds on almost like a a a testing kind of a thing to see if i could pass and so uh the public school was a lot easier and a lot a lot a lot i liked it a lot better what did you think was the reason if you thought there was a reason for your mother's pressuring and criticizing you uh with respect to schoolwork it's his state of mind all right we'll be received for that purpose um could you sit back thank you if i thought there were two reasons one i i thought she was doing it basically because she was afraid of dad the way dad treated mom very early on in my life when i didn't do well in sports or when i was not getting into pds i failed getting into pds a few times and he would treat mom really badly and and so i thought that she was pushing me and pushing me and putting me in closets and forcing me to do better because she was afraid of what dad was going to do to her okay and it was that your mindset about it all the way through your school career is that what you always believed that's what i believed until the end when i thought that maybe she was just doing it because she wanted to get the grades herself she wanted me to get the grades for herself what do you mean for herself well she at the end she was taking she was taking it really really hard when i got bad grades and she was really excited when i got good grades to the point where she was no longer even cared whether i gave her the assignment and she would correct it she would just do the assignment and give it me to hand it in and i wasn't sure i still thought it might be because of dad but i wasn't hearing dad uh yell at her and hit her anymore when i was 14 and so on so i thought maybe she was just doing it for her own so did you think it was important to her just for herself yes did did your mother give you any instructions about whether or not you should discuss your school performance with any other people yes and what were her instructions it's not being offered for the truth your honor it's being offered for his state of mind about secrecy given to him yes by his mother thank you the instructions she used to give to me was was simply that i was not to discuss my grades she didn't even want me to discuss what grade i was in with my ontario because i had to stay back a year she didn't want me to discuss how i was doing in my classes or or what my teachers were saying or or anything like that she certainly didn't want me to discuss the fact that she was training me in school so how did that make you feel about what your mother thought of you as a student or what you thought of yourself as a student well i it just i always knew what she thought of me i mean i knew that she didn't think i was a very good student and she didn't like how i did in class and she didn't she didn't think i was very uh very good in school did you hear your mother talking to other people about your schoolwork yes and what would she say to other people about it she would say that i was getting straight a's and that i was one of the brightest kids in the class and and doing everything very very well did you know that wasn't true of course you knew your mother was lying yes was this the only thing you heard your mother lying about when you were young or were there other things no there were a lot of other things and how many of those are were there other things that related to the appearance of performance of the members of the family particularly of yourself and your brother the appearance of performance she would lie about how we did i don't understand what you're saying that's what i meant she would lie about how you did in what areas she would she would say that we won this tournament or were playing just terrific and our coaches are raving about us or this and that when it wasn't true and would she would she ever mention what your teachers were saying about you yes and would that even be teachers that you had had i mean you heard two of your teachers testify here that you plagiarized or copied something no no she would always talk about how the teachers thought i was to talk about how the teachers raved about me how the tennis coaches raved about me and how they thought i was this great student and so much ability and so on how did that make you feel when she's lying this way right in front of you well it made me feel sort of embarrassed but it made me feel like obviously she doesn't think that i am doing well enough did it give you any kind of insight into how important these things were to her well i always knew how important image was to her just from the way she would talk about she would fuss over how she had to be perfect when she went out to a party or fuss about the way she went to a party she liked to go in limousines she just talked about how she didn't want any fights at the party between mom and dad between her and dad and uh i always knew image was very important to her i'd like to um go back for a moment to the sexual activity between yourself and your father for a few points alright um when you were about 13 was there an episode of what you call the mirror that had to do with the sexual activity between yourself and your father well it would happen a lot of times right after sex so what do you mean what i mean is did he do a drill in front of the mirror that had specifically to do with the secrecy sure okay and was i right was that when you were 13 yes okay would you tell us about that particular drill i was sitting in front of the mirror he used to do this every once in a while i'd say at least once or twi it happened more than just when i was 13 and uh and i would i would sit in the uh in the chair in front of the mirror and he would ask me if i told anyone and i said no and he would say what's going to happen to you if you tell anyone and i remember the first time i said that you will hurt me and he said wrong and so i hit myself and he said what's going to happen if you tell someone and i didn't answer and he said again he said what is going to happen if you tell someone and i said you'll kill me and he said right and that happened more than once yes you got it right the second time though excuse me i would learn how to get it right the answers so the second time what was your answer just that he'll kill me and then he said right okay also when you were about 13 was there a nickname that you gave yourself that was related to what you've described here as rough sex yes what was that nickname um the hurt man and did you share that nickname with anyone yes and who did you tell that that was your nickname i told some of my friends i told diane um i told lyle i was the hurt man do you have a cousin named andy yes did you ever mention that nickname to andy yes i more considered andy one of my best friends than my cousin okay did you explain to um lyle and all these other people why you were calling yourself hurt man or did you just tell them the nickname i just told them it was because i got hurt a lot and i could you didn't tell them how you were being hurt or who was hurting you did you tell them how you were being hurt or who who was hurting you no excuse me right now do you recall mr menendez that you testified that on um the tuesday night before your parents were killed you strike that on tuesday afternoon before your parents were killed you started a conversation with your brother in the guest house where you brought to his attention a talk he had had with your father when you were young yes when you were young how did you find out or how did you know that lyle had had a talk with your father because my father came in the room and beat me up and how old do you recall being when that happened i recall being 11. and what if anything did your father say in accompanying this beating he came in the room and he said he just very angrily told me that he could not believe i told lyle and what was i thinking and he didn't understand that i was going to he was going to kill me if i told lyle and all this stuff and then he was he had me up against the wall and was it after that that these drills in front of the mirror about what he would do to you if you told began yeah it was longer after that though this was just i mean he had told me many times not specifically in reference to lyle that what he would do to me if i told um but it was unexpected because i hadn't told lyle and i didn't i didn't know he was gonna come in the room i wasn't prepared and so it was a shock i denied it but uh he didn't believe me you denied what i denied telling lyle to whom to my dad and who didn't believe you my dad now after that did you have any conversation with lyle um about or did lyle ask you any questions about anything going on between yourself and your father yes lyle would ask me a question every once in a while for a short period afterwards he would say is anything strange happening in your room with dad or something like that and i would say no i don't know what you're talking about and why did you say no i don't know what you're talking about because i didn't want to give any indication that anything was because i didn't want what happened with dad to happen again you didn't want lyle to tell him exactly what did you mean when you said you didn't want to have happen with dad what happened before [Applause] i i didn't know what lyle had told dad but i didn't want lyle to say anything to dad about anything i just wanted to leave it alone if he knew i didn't know how he knew but i just wanted him to leave it alone now you had mentioned in your testimony yesterday something about um vaseline was vaseline something that figured into the sexual activity between yourself and your father yes and what specific uh type of the sexual activity did vaseline figure into um the actual sex was vaseline ever a part of the rough sex only in respect to actual sex but hardly ever what about with respect to certain implements was it ever used for that yes it was used rarely but not very often and with respect to actual sex mr menendez i think you've already testified that was still a component when you lived in california is that right yes and when was the last episode of actual sex between yourself and your father in california in may 1989 and was there some rule or directive of your father's having to do with vaseline yes what was that rule or directive but i was supposed to leave it in my room and i wasn't supposed to remove it from there and how would it get into your room well he brought it in very early in pennington um when i was 12 years old and left it there and i was told not to touch it again and he did the same in california he did the same in princeton and when you were living in beverly hills um was there a particular place in the room where he would keep the vaseline yes and where was that on my i on my bed there were a lot of shelves on one of the shelves in my bed you've looked at the photograph that's up on the board on the top on the right yes is there a jar of vaseline on a shelf on your bed in that photograph yes now you've talked about sexual activity occurring between yourself and your father in your bedrooms at various houses remember that testimony yes were there other places in the house where sexual activity between yourself and your father would occur only one other place and where was that in the shower your brother testified there were times when um you and your brother and your father would shower together and your father would do something with the water yes was that an experience that you recall yes i believe your brother testified to a shower that had doors where the regulator was had a wrench on it yeah i don't remember that so well what house was that that was in the north mill house i think do you remember things about uh where your father did things with the water from the pennington house yes those i remember and what do you remember just generally about what he would do at the pennington house at the pennington house it was a lighter thing he would when i was washing my hair and the shampoo was getting on my face he would suddenly turn the water either all the way cold or all the way hot so i learned how to shampoo my hair back because that's what he always did he uh he never got any shampoo on his forehead just in case i did that to him because it was sort of a thing that he used to do and uh and uh and then he would have lyle and i see who was the strongest person by uh he wouldn't turn the water hot he would turn it all the way cold and see who could last for 30 seconds in the water it could last for 45 seconds and so on but let's back up to though when you had the shampoo in your eyes before you learned how to shampoo your hair to not get the soap in your eyes okay he said he would turn the water all the way hot or all the way cold yes do you ever get burned yes now when when you and your brother and your father showered together was there any sex on those occasions no were there other occasions when just you and your father showered together yes and was there sex on those occasions not always but sometimes and what would have preceded those showers what came before the showers if you recall something i'm doing sometimes he would shave me i was really asking what activities would this be on the weekends the showers together yes well it would be after tennis after sports of course okay so it's after sports of course yes okay well we took every time we finished playing on the tennis court um we always him and i and sometimes lyle depends how old he was at the time we'd go and take a shower together now you mean every time meaning on the weekends yes he really wasn't around too often during the day in the week during the week yes let's talk about during the week during the school year okay days when you'd go to school yes okay would there usually be tennis practice before you went to school yes and when there was tennis practice before you went to school did you change and shower first or did you just go to school after practice usually we just went right to school so would the time when you would shower at home after tennis practice be on the weekends or at the end of the day almost always on the weekends we'd be playing tennis for all day like six hours uh every day in the weekend and afterwards we would go and take a shower now you mentioned something about he shaped you what age are you talking about when i was 12 when you were 12 12. and did this happen only when you were 12 or did it go on no it began when i was 12. and how long did it go on just for uh it didn't happen in princeton so it ended before he moved to princeton and you moved to princeton when you were 15 and a half yes and what part of your body did he shave or what hair did he shave my pubic hair now apart from the showers and your bedrooms were there sexual incidents with your father in other places besides your home yes and what kinds of places uh in hotel rooms when we were by tennis or i remember twice when we were on vacation and you recall what ages you were on vacation when it happened one of them i i do one of them we were in uh st lucia and uh and the other one we were in i don't remember exactly where we were uh what type of things we're skiing vacation we were either in vermont or we were in colorado not really sure and you're not sure how old you were for the episode on the skiing vacation yeah i don't remember st lucia is where that's in the caribbean did you take all of your vacations with your parents yes now you said there were also hotel rooms when you were on the road playing tennis would this be when your parents were traveling with you in tournaments yes and mr menendez did such activity happen when you were traveling in the tournaments over the summer of 1989 yes and would there be a difference in the kind of sexual activity that would occur when you were traveling depending on how you did in the tournament yes it would all depend on how i did in the tournament whether i won or i lost and if you won what was the usual sexual activity well in california it wasn't so usual anymore um for us to have nice sex but it would only happen um after i won okay so nice sex was reserved for when you won yes that's when your father was in what kind of mood he was in a elated mood and uh what would happen when you lost um one of two things and what are the two things um he would either have actual sex or usually it was knees and was it knees that happened during the summer of 1989 yes now you testify that the last sexual activity with your father was in august of 1989 where did it occur in my bedroom in beverly hills yes when did it occur in august i know i know when it occurred before the uh before the talk right after we got back from kalamazoo okay and you got back from kalamazoo somewhere around the 9th or 10th yes so was it within a day or two yes and what type was it was nice now mr menendez when you moved to california how old were you i was 16. you know i was 15 and when i moved i turned 16 right after you turned 16 in november after you moved yes and up until that time had you ever had a girlfriend no when you were in the 8th and 9th grade excuse me did you have friends at school who would talk about girls and sex yes and did these friends have social interactions with girls did you no why because i was i was afraid of that what were you afraid of i was afraid of they would talk about sex a lot and i was just afraid of the conversation i didn't even want to get into the conversation i certainly didn't want to be around girls when talking about that or even really around girls and that type of thing why because it just it made me real uh self-conscious made me real um afraid that they might be able to tell something that i knew a little bit too much or that i knew something that i shouldn't have or that they would be able to tell something i didn't know tell what that i would be able to i would something would slip out about what about about what was happening with my dad okay um in fact was there a time when you made uh choices about who your friends would be based on whether certain boys talked about sex and other boys didn't yeah there were two of my uh friends in school two of my good friends um in school my only real friends but uh in school they talked too much about sex and uh i told them that i i couldn't deal with the the friendship anymore i couldn't handle it were these friends trying to get you to do anything yes what were they trying to get you to do they were trying to get me to kiss a girl or have a girlfriend approach a girl okay now when you moved to california did did your mother start to talk to you about something that she had not previously talked to you about yes do you recall where you were living when your mother first brought this particular topic up to you on the oakwood apartments so that's right after you got to california yes how long did you live in the oakwood apartments very short time i don't even remember how long a month or two you don't remember not really sure it was very short time because by november we were living in the calabasas house by your birthday yeah so it couldn't have been more than two months okay now while you were living in the oakwood apartments did you hear arguments between your parents yes and what did you learn from those arguments about what was going on between your parents that they were talking about divorce and did you learn what the reason was why they were talking about divorce because my uh dad had an affair and what was how what was your mother's basic mood if you will during the time that you lived in the oakwood apartments she was very depressed um crying a lot but very angry when talking about with my dad she was angry with your dad yeah she was really angry she was really angry now did they um before this time had they ever talked about their marriage or their relationship in front of you no now were they doing this openly in front of you or were you just hearing things it was a very small uh small apartment and uh it was only three rooms and so you could hear through the walls but this would they would be in another room yes they'd be in the middle room there was a bedroom on each side of the middle room and they'd be in the middle room is the middle room a living room it's like a living room eating room kind of a thing and was it while you were still there that your mother brought up this topic to you yes and what topic did she bring up uh that she wanted me to get a girlfriend and what did she say she said i had to have a girlfriend within six months or she didn't really say or she was just made it pretty clear that something bad would happen if i didn't have a girlfriend within six months and did you have any idea why she would say this to you i assumed it was because of uh her image she wanted her son when i was younger they would ask people would ask me in front of her oh do you have a girlfriend or um she would they would ask her in front of me does he like girls you know yet i was young and she said no no he doesn't have time for that he doesn't have that but when we moved to california it was it was a really big thing for me to have a girlfriend and uh later on i found out why but at that point i didn't know okay and did you within six months find a girlfriend i i think i didn't make the six-month deadline but it was just after and uh what were the initials of this girlfriend so we don't have to use her name uh chaos and was this a girl that you went with twice over two different time periods yes now you also said that the first three and a half months that you were in california there was no sexual activity whatsoever by your father right did you know why that was true no i had no idea before you left princeton the last couple of months you were living in the princeton house was your father out of town a great deal yes did you learn that he was in california most of that time yes and did you understand or did he tell you the purpose of his travels well i knew that we were planning on moving to california and at any time did you learn that he was job hunting or job interview yes so how would you compare therefore mr menendez your father's um being uh it's a clumsy question let me withdraw that you've testified that over the course of your childhood in new jersey your father would be in the city in new york city during the week or travel a lot is that right yes was he away from home more when you lived in princeton or less than when you lived in pennington he was away from home more was he away also for longer periods of time yes he traveled a lot more i mean he traveled a lot when we lived in pennington um but most of the time he was just in new york and he stayed over there a few nights but when we were in princeton he left the state a lot so do you have many memories of him at home in the princeton house at all i have almost none now when the uh sex started up again in after the three and a half or so months in california uh this was before you had met your mother's deadline for getting a girlfriend is that right i'm sorry was this before you met your mother's deadline before you got your girlfriend what was the sex in california starting up again yeah long before how did you feel about the relationship with that girlfriend that first girlfriend well it was like a new life for me it was uh it was something that i had never experienced before and suddenly i was actually happy sometimes i was i felt really i looked forward to seeing her and i felt really warm when i was with her and it it uh it made me really insecure at times but it also made me feel more comfortable and did it have any effect on your feelings about what was going on between yourself and your father yeah it had a big effect and and what was that it made me really really despise really hate what was happening with that it made me really really dread it and uh really really hate it was there something that you were worried about more so than ever once you had a girlfriend concerning the sex objection sustained what were your concerns now that you had a girlfriend with respect well strike that were there any new concerns that you had concerning the sex with your father now that you were seeing a girl no concerns about him just concerns about her finding out about me do you recall on mr menendez whether there were ever sexual incidents with your father on days when you had dates with your girlfriend yes uh yes was there anything uh notable about that yes sometimes i just refuse to go out on the date i remember one time when i was about a month after we started dating my dad had come into my room and i was supposed to meet her and i called her and i said i was crying i said i want to end the relationship and she wouldn't let me end it because i wouldn't tell her why but i just had a lot of i had a lot of confusion a lot of problems with it now you've testified that in the very early years of the sexual relationship with your father you actually didn't have negative feelings about it because you felt it was a closeness with him no i didn't have um very many negative feelings about him coming into my room and being with me i didn't when i was young i didn't you know i i didn't like some of the things that was happening but i thought it was just something that i'd get used to i thought it was me my name was yonko and so were you actively seeking or thinking of ways to end it when you were young say under 11 or not no not at all now when it got violent at 11 okay i think you've described a period when after that you were very depressed you tried to run away and then there was a period that you called trying to fight back like the cinnamon and hiding in those things yes now at that time did you want it to end yes did you ever tell your mother in an effort to get it to end definitely not why didn't you tell your mother because i you know for a few reasons um one one of the big reasons was if she believed me i knew she couldn't do anything about it she certainly couldn't get dad to stop by fighting dad i just felt bad for her and i didn't she had a lot of problems she was sad or angry a lot and i didn't want to have to give her more problems what about any concern about your father if you had told her well that was the obvious concern i didn't want to get beaten up i didn't want to get killed i didn't want anything to happen to me now did you believe that if you told your mother and she accepted it that she would mind what your father was doing yes of course and did you think that if she minded she'd try to help you i thought she would try to help me and then her and dad would would no longer get along or dad would do something to her real bad and would destroy the family i didn't want all these problems and that was apart from whatever you thought directly might happen from your father yes now did you by the time you were well i don't you tell me at what age did you come to believe that what was happening between you and your father was really abnormal really abnormal uh really wrong or abnormal uh when i was 13 or 14 when i was younger when i was like 12 and so on i just really hated it but i thought it was normal um it was only when i i talked to my cousin i i i just began to really really really have problems with it that i thought maybe this was not something normal you said you talked to your cousin mr menendez was there one person that you were closest to when you were young yes and was that a person your age or someone younger than yourself that was someone younger than myself and it and who was that person that was my cousin andy andy what andy connolly and whose child is he my aunts yes your aunt who my aunt martha okay now was there a time in your life that when you were closer in some ways to andy than even to your own brother uh yeah especially when lyle got a girlfriend and how old were you when lyle got a girlfriend i was 13 i believe and at that age when you were 13 is that when lyle started seeing that young woman that's been talked about here and before that in a year or two before that had you been spending social time with lyle uh a lot of social time we would he was my only real real friend i mean andy and lyle and then i had uh one guy uh when when brendan who i would see every once in a while what were you doing with lyle uh i would go to the mall with him he would go to the arcade a lot and um i would i would play soccer with him just friendly and house with him and climb trees and do things and then he got a girlfriend yes and how much of that activity between yourself and lyle continued after stacy came upon the scene not much i felt really uh really abandoned and uh abandoned by him by lyle i knew he didn't he didn't do it on purpose but i just felt like i didn't have i felt like i lost my best friend and because he would spend all the time with stacey and at this time did you therefore become closer with andy yes mr menendez when you were about 13 did you actually tell andy connor what was happening between yourself and your father um i told him i'm not asking what you said because that would be hearsay but did you tell him what was happening yeah i i believe i told him before 13. before you were 13. yeah i think i told him when i was uh before lyle started dating dating stacey when i was about 12. well if he remembers that he was ten could your memory be defective possibly my memory is defected past you're three years older than him aren't you uh yeah i think so and was he how did you strike that how did you tell him how did well strike that you've testified you were in part afraid to tell people is that right yes i was very afraid why would you tell andy if you were afraid to tell because andy and i were having a really close relationship and i didn't really tell him at first i did it real slowly getting into it i eventually i did but i got real slowly first because i was afraid you're afraid of what i was afraid of telling him and him telling somebody else so i wanted to see how he would sort of react that sort of thing and did he keep the secret as far as i know you testified before that you ultimately found out or learned why it was your mother was pressuring you to have a girlfriend yes what was it you well first of all when did you make whatever discovery it was after um kirsten broke up with me kirsten was the girlfriend yes and when was it that kirsten broke up with you in just just after summer in september of 1987. was that the first time you and kirsten broke up or the second that was the first time and did you renew your relationship with kirsten at some point after that yes and when did that happen almost exactly a year later in uh august or august of 1988. and how long did your relationship with her last an august debate from august of 88 about six months now when was it you say it was september 87 when you had when you made this discovery of my mother it wasn't like a discovery it was just knowledge or belief of why she was pressuring me okay well how did you gain the knowledge or belief well she would she was real nasty after a relationship with kirsten i ended and uh she would say what are you gay or are you not man enough for her uh are you just not just not a man enough person to be with her is this what is this what your problem is she would really uh uh get down on me so she gave you the impression that she questioned whether or not you were gay yes mr menendez did you ever question in your mind whether or not you were gay yes and why was that if you know that's because i uh i didn't understand what was happening with my father what do you mean you didn't understand it in california it it uh i didn't understand why it didn't hurt so much and anymore and i didn't understand i just felt like i was having more friends because i had a car and i was able to play tennis with them and i was a little bit more independent and i felt like i was supposed to be stronger and i would still be doing this with dad and i wouldn't i wouldn't scream at him or fight back with him because i was afraid but i i didn't i still thought i should have and i would still be able to have an orgasm uh okay so those things those factors made you wonder if in fact maybe you were gay maybe that's why this is happening maybe that's why i don't resist maybe that's why it doesn't hurt savagery yes i didn't understand and did did these concerns about whether or not you were gay did this bother you yeah it was on my mind a lot i i uh it bothered me did you think it was wrong for somebody to be gay or was it just that you didn't know what you were no i didn't think i was wrong to think i was uh you didn't understand my question do you think it was wrong for people to be gay no so what was it it was just that i was confused and was difficult for me and my mom made it seem like it was worse than death to be gay and uh and i i didn't think i was i just i didn't know i i really didn't understand did you like girls yes were you attracted to girls yes and eventually did you have intimate relationships with girls yes you said your mom made it sound like the worst thing in the world did your father make gay jokes yes did your father call you a particular name associated uh negative name for yeah he called me a [ __ ] did he call you that a lot yeah he called me a [ __ ] or a [ __ ] um he used both of them uh he he hated gay people um and he absolutely we refused to uh accept that what was happening between us he just said that it wasn't any of that he hated that without naming him it was there a relative on your mother's side of the family that was perceived by the family as being gay he was gay okay well we didn't know that we just felt that he was okay and how did your father talk about or treat that particular individual he ridiculed him made fun of him talked a lot behind his back would say things like you don't want to be i don't want to say his name you don't want to be like this person uh uh he would one time i remember lyle bought the same color and same same basically the same type of shoe as this person was wearing and he made fun of lyle for the longest time for it for getting the same kind of shoes as the relative yes now what did you think when your father who is having sex with you is taunting you with being gay i was real confused i didn't think that what dad and i was doing was a gay thing i thought it was just what dad and i was doing and uh but it made me real confused because it didn't hurt like i thought it should anymore and so i didn't understand when your father called you [ __ ] did you ever answer him back in your head yes what did you say i said with him what the hell are you now when you were 13 to 15 and the rough sex was happening did you uh based on things your father was doing did you form some opinion about uh his experience in these matters i didn't i didn't hear the first part of the question are you hearing okay right now yeah or perhaps we could take a break briefly [Music] we'll take a recess and we'll resume it 10 minutes after the hour mr menendez i want to take you back to muncie new york when you live there do you remember your earliest recollection of being frightened by one of your parents which parent your father yes and what were the circumstances of this earliest memory of being frightened by your father i was swimming do you remember where you were swimming i was swimming at the i believe it was called ramapo i'm not quite sure of the name it was a lap pool and what happened well when i was in muncie i couldn't quite swim um the 25 yard pool without breathing and he wanted me to do it straight without breathing because that that way you swim faster and i couldn't do it so he would train me to do it without breathing and how would he do that by grabbing my hair and dunking me under the water and then lifting me up and dunking me under the water again so what frightened you just the fact that he dunked me into the water for 20 30 seconds and i didn't know what was happening i i was trying to grab his hand and trying to get his hand off my head because i was desperate for prayer but he felt that i had to just be on the brink of not of needing desperately needing air and then he would lift me up so i would train my lungs to be able to expand and expand did you enjoy this experience oh it was it was really scary because i thought i thought he was gonna kill me not intentionally i just thought that i was going to drown underneath the water because i was down under there so long and i didn't think he understood that i couldn't breathe sometimes and he would lift me up in the air and i would be able to gas for water and then he'd put in for water just for air and then he would put me down underneath the water again and uh i just didn't have enough time to to get air would your mother ever be around when your father was doing this kind of training yeah would she ever intervene no my mom didn't intervene uh when my dad was doing things um over the years were there occasions when your father was being physically uh violent with you yes did your mother ever intervene no were there times when you were young when your father was ridiculing or berating you when your mother would say a word or two when i was young would she do that yes and would even that intervention did that end before you were a teenager objection lady for how long would that type of intervention how long did that type of intervention by your mother continue it continued when i was young not all the time usually at the dinner table when he uh he didn't get on me very much usually just lie out but i guess a lot of times i wanted to to jump in not when dad was angry but when dad was in a good mood to sort of be a part of the conversation and uh and dad would jump on top of me uh physically or verbally verbally and my mom would say jose and uh he would just look at her and he wouldn't stop that ended i guess before pds so it was before i was 11. now have you seen the photographs up on the wall um there's a photograph of you there i think someone testified you're about 18 months old hanging from a bar in a gym it's on the top on the left yes you remember that photograph being taken no do you remember something similar happening later involving hanging from a bar with your father yes it wasn't really hanging from a bar he would put up a bar in the doorway or he would put up a bar not put up a bar with the bar on the soccer field different wherever there was a bar he would want me to do pull-ups to get my uh arms stronger and so on and uh and just as i was getting tired i would want to jump off because i was too tired and when he he'd uh grab my feet and what would that do well if i fell he would grab my feet and then he would lift him and so if i fell i'd fall in my face and uh so i would i would be desperately holding on to the bar and why did he do that what was the purpose i think partly he enjoyed it he wanted to get me to to to cry out and beg for him to put me down and partly to keep me stronger so that i don't know how but every time just as i was about to fall he dropped me sometimes i fell on both my feet and my hands but he was able to drop he was able to time it really well it amazed me because i didn't think he'd be able to i was really afraid that he'd hold my feet up too long and he thought i was just crying woof or something and wasn't really serious and i was afraid that he wasn't going to drop me in time but he always did when you were young and you were afraid of things okay were your parents ever approving of your fear oh no no they hated i hated people that were afraid okay you're the right distance from the mic now but now you have to speak up a little bit okay they hated people who were afraid yes and did they seem afraid my mom was sometimes afraid of my dad uh especially early on in life uh but otherwise they were not they certainly weren't afraid of other people or other things they never appeared afraid to you sustained did they ever did either of them ever appear afraid of other people or situations to you definitely not especially um not my mother excuse me especially not my mother she uh she used to pride on i guess partly for dad about being how strong she uh could be in brave i mean in situations well did you ever hear or see your father being anything but fearless or brave definitely well no that was not something my dad would do i want to uh turn your attention now to your mother starting with when you were living in um did you feel when you were a little vegas yes what time frame are you referring to well do you know what years you lived in muncie mr menendez yes okay what years between three and seven okay so that would have well other witnesses have testified you moved to muncie before you were two years old do you remember being two years old no my earliest memory is three okay do you remember talking to detective zoller on september 17 1989 and telling him about what you were like when you were a little child um remember that conversation i remember hearing it in court and reading it i don't specifically remember the conversation okay uh and when you were thinking of yourself as a little child and talking to detective zoller were you thinking of yourself as someone living in muncie or living in pennington or what living in muncie and how little a child were you thinking earliest memories um yes when i was three four five six and what was your memory of yourself at that very early age what kind of child do you remember being i just remembered being a uh a nature oriented person i really like the environment i really like trees and animals and bushes and leaves and so on when you were real little did you think of yourself as a happy child or an unhappy child uh i was i was happy when i was uh when i was outside when you were little yes showing you this photograph walk 271 do you recognize the person yes is that you at three well it's me um you look at the back yes it's me at three your mother's handwriting is on the back yes and is that the way you thought of yourself as a small child uh yeah sometimes well that's a happy child isn't it yes i want to call your attention for a moment mr menendez to these photographs that are up on the board let's check their exhibit number 203 206. 207 you see these three photographs can you see them yes yes and do you notice in two of these three photographs there's something on your face yeah it's just a bruise haircut do you remember that particular bruiser cut no i want to call your attention to this last photograph before we were in court had you seen this photograph before yes had you seen this photograph even printed in articles and shown in newspapers yeah that's where i saw it and is there something about this photograph that you noticed when you saw it printed yes what was it that you noticed right away uh where my dad's hand was where is your dad's hand in this photograph on my brother's uh uh genital area and uh you didn't have any difficulty seeing that or noticing that when you saw that photograph did you no did you read the articles that were written the articles that ran that photograph i think i read that article i'm not i'm not sure one article that ran that photograph yeah i believe it was a magazine article and i i read that one did the writer ever comment on where your father's hand was no objection sustained the answer when you lived in muncie were there occasions that you recall you were home by yourself yes and approximately how old were you on those occasions well you're asking me when i was in muncie yes i was between the ages of three and seven okay do you remember specific occasions when you were home alone yes and uh how did you come to be home alone everyone else in the house left and who would be the last person to leave who actually left you home uh my mom and my brother would leave uh i remember specifically they'd leave to go play tennis sometimes and do you remember an occasion a strike that how did you feel about being home by yourself i hated being alone i just hated being alone at the house i didn't like it during the day but at night i definitely did not like being home alone why it just was was really frightening to me i just would hear a lot of noises and i would get real scared and go under my bed and is there a particular occasion you remember when you were too scared to stay home alone overall yes there was uh a few times um when i just couldn't handle it was there one when you went looking for someone yes and how old were you i think i was five and who did you go looking for my mom and was it daytime or night time it was at night and where had your mom gone did you know to the tennis club with lyle and so what were you doing i was walking to the tennis club and how far away was the tennis club five miles six months and what happened is you were walking to the tennis club on the way back uh my mom found me who's way back your way back or her no on her way back was she walking or was she drinking no she was driving in the car she saw me on the side of the road and she stopped and picked you up yes was there an occasion when you were living in muncie when your brother lyle got in the family car yes and how old was lyle at the time if you can remember again he'd have to be between the ages of six and ten okay but you have an idea was he closer to six or was he i think i think he was around eight how old were you i was young i was like five and what happened um he got in the car and he was playing around with the driving wheel and i guess put the gear shift on neutral and the car started going backwards where was the car in the driveway and so it started to move yeah it started to roll backwards what did you do i i ran in the house to get mom and say lyle's in the car the car's rolling down the hill because it was a slanted driveway and uh and she said okay okay i'll be there in a minute what was she doing she was on the phone and was she there in a minute made it just before the car uh ran over the um mailbox took her a little while i was surprised well did you ask her more than once did you go yeah no i ran back out and ran back in and ran back out because the car was just gradually it wasn't rolling down it was just moving it was picking up speed and what had you told your mother i told her that lau was in the car and the car was rolling down the driveway and were you alarmed yeah i was scared for a while i wanted him to get out of the car but he was trying to get the car back in the gear because he didn't want to get in trouble and how did your mother appear when you told her this like she was bothered she was on the phone i don't remember exactly was there another episode um later on when something happened to lyle's foot yes this i remember okay well do you remember what you just told us yes but i remember mom's reaction to this okay well what is this tell us about this incident with lyle's foot lyle was in mom's bedroom he was on this side of the bed and he had stepped on a needle and i just heard him cry out and i was i was in the hallway or right next to my room and i came in and i saw the needle sticking out of both sides of his big toe and it it it really scared me uh how is he how is he behaving oh he was crying and screaming and uh and so i ran and i ran and got mom and she was on the phone and this time i i didn't care i was just pulling on her arm asking her to come because lyle was in pain and lyle had a needle in his foot and she pushed me away and she said i'll be there in a minute and you told her that lyle had a needle in his foot yes and did she come right away no and did you have to go back again yes i was begging for her to come because lyle wasn't moving at his foot right in the air and it was it was it was uh really uh hurting him did uh did the needle get removed from lyle's foot i assume who removed it i assume it was my mother and do you know how long it took before she tended to him yeah took a while and that's what really surprised me it surprised you it surprised me that she didn't come right away uh i want her to get off the phone well mr menendez did you have an opportunity when you were quite young to observe the relationship between your brother and your mother yes was it somewhat different than your relationship with your mother yes what was it like she uh she disliked him she hated him there was a lot of tension and she didn't care about him and how did you know all right is this being offered for the state of mind of the defendant witness here yes sir all right it'll be received for that limited purpose okay now what was it that you saw or heard that led you to conclude that that your mother hated your brother just what she would say to him she would say similar things to me but just so often to lyle all the time she would blame him for things that he didn't do to dad because she didn't want to get in trouble as she would uh well she did that to me too but she she just the way she treated lyle i knew that i knew that uh that she didn't she didn't like lyle on an average day mr menendez would your mother drive you and your brother to school yes and on an average day did she appear in the mornings to be angry with lyle yes what would happen if you can recall if for example she couldn't find her purse or she couldn't find her keys or she couldn't find something she'd blame lyle and to the best of your knowledge did he have anything to do with her purse or her keys or anything like that no whenever whenever she couldn't find anything or really was late or this she'd and lyle was there she'd always blame lyle she'd always say it's your fault you're making me busy you make me too frustrated i don't have time with you around and how did you feel about her blaming loud did you have an opinion as to whether or not he was responsible for these things no i knew he wasn't responsible but i figured that was just my mother and how did you feel about this i felt bad for lyle was he purposely upsetting her from what you could observe again it will be received only for the state of mind of the witness thank you me was he purposefully upsetting her on these occasions not that i saw now what was different with you and your mother she when i was younger um [Music] seemed to care a lot more about me than lyle in fact she told me that that i was a better kid than lyle she uh she she would compare me to lyle like i did a lot of things for her i like i like doing things for i would vacuum the floor i would do the dishes and she would so she would say these things to me because i knew she would when i did that and uh she just seemed to to care more about me than lau now you said she said things like you were a better son than lyle yes what other complimentary things did your mother say to you over the course of your life mr minutes just basically comparing me to lyle so she favorably compared you to lyle yes now you've already testified that she would call you stupid and dummy and that kind of thing do you can you remember and you've been asked this before you've been asked to try to remember haven't you positive things that your mother would say to you yes and you've been asked to remember positive things that your mother would do with you too yes have you been able to come up with any more than what you just told us overall no what was the best thing about your mother from your standpoint as a child the way she smiled she had a nice smile yeah and what would she smile about she would smile when i uh i cleaned the house or did something nice for her she would she would smile would she smile if you won tournaments or won prizes or won trophies yes would she smile at you for any other reason that you've been able to remember no and did you do things to try to get her to smile yes have it appears to be your honorary mother's day card some writing inside 72 if i might mark at 272 yes that is the next exhibit number 272. mr menendez do you recognize that yes did you make that yes did you make it in school or at home or do you know um i don't remember you have to speak i don't remember and do you recognize the writing inside yes and is it your writing is that yes yes on the back page of the written part inside yes is there a list of things there yes and is the list of things where the things that you would do when you live get your mother to smile yes now do you recall an occasion when you did things around the house in an effort to get your mother to smile that didn't work out quite right yes and how old were you on this particular occasion i was i was playing tennis i believe i was under 13. okay you were over 11 and under 13. yes okay and what did you do on that occasion i was baking a cake for her okay and what happened and i did something wrong in making the cake um i either turned up the temperature too much or put in the wrong ingredient or something and the cake sort of went all over the oven spilled out and did a lot of things okay what happened and i noticed this right before she got home with lyle and uh she uh she came in the house and i was trying to clean up the mess that i had made in the oven and she saw it and she got extremely upset okay and after she got extremely upset what if anything did she do she saw what i did and she started screaming and she grabbed part of the cake and started throwing it at me and i ran up to my room and she chased me up there was your mother ever uh physical with you did she ever hit you or slap you or hurt you yes and what were some of the things she would hit you for i guess when i made her very angry okay these these type of things things that i screwed up on if i didn't vacuum the floor right she would she wouldn't come over and hit me in the face she would just pound on my chest or slap me if i wasn't doing my homework right or not my homework my testing that's when she would get really angry for that as well um just different things like that mr menendez did you bite your nails yes did you bite your nails when you were a child yes and would you do you have recollections of riding in a car with your mother and biting your nails yes and what would your mother do when you bit your nails she would uh i would be biting my nails either next to her on the seat or in the back seat and she'd hit her hand against my face where my hand was she'd hit my hand in my face she'd smack you yes and what would what would you do after she smacked you i would put my hand down and i just had the urge to bite my fingernails and i couldn't stop and so i would sort of gradually put my hand back up to my face and she'd hit me again okay so smacking you didn't stop you from biting your nails no but would she continue to smack you even if you kept putting your hand back eventually if if i kept putting my hand back up she'd get too frustrated and keep hitting me and i'd turn my back and she'd start pounding on my back now did your father do a similar thing with respect to your nail binding yes did your father bite his nails yes anybody smack him in the face for doing it no he just didn't want me to bite my fingernails uh was your mother a very attentive cook objection did your mother ever scare you with the potential of burning down the house yes and how would that come about just when uh i would be upstairs in my room and there would be smoke coming up the stairs and how often did that happen that extreme only happened a couple of times when she i guess she left the food in the oven and it was burning and it was coming out of the oven and the smoke would fill the house and go up the stairs and she purposely disconnected the uh smoking alarm for that okay what would happen when the house filled with smoke she taught me how to get down on my knees and put a uh i guess it was a hand cloth she had something in the kitchen um over my face that was wet and she would have me practice being down on my knees crawling under the smoke she'd have loud do the same thing and then walk out crawl outside with the sliding glass door now you say that this uh type of incident where the house filled with smoke only happened a couple of times but did she burn the food more often than a couple of times she read the food almost every day she she she was absent-minded a lot and she just did things like that now was it your mother's responsibility to get you to and from your various commitments with sports training yes and uh would she drop you off on time no would she pick you up on time no uh what experiences did you have of not being picked up on time i i i guess sometimes she was with lyle and sometimes lao and i would just wait and i would just wait for a couple hours after i finished playing tennis or swimming and would this be during the daytime or at nighttime that night and how would you feel when you're waiting hours for your mother to pick you up mistakes sustain would you sometimes wait you said you waited you'd wait for a couple of hours uh overall yeah one time i remember being at petty waiting for over two hours betty it was a swim club not a club but a swim school and you waited over two hours yes was that the only time you had a long wait for your mother no how often would this happen i usually had to wait anywhere between a half hour and an hour but sometimes it was long but not that often and would the other children be there waiting also this bears on his state of mind all right let's get on with it would you be alone yes in the dark yes at night and how did you feel about your mother as being left alone this way i just felt like she had other things to do did you think she cared about you i thought she cared about me i just felt that i wasn't she just had other things to do when you were living in pennington mr menendez did you were you ever forced to eat garbage yes and uh who forced you to do that my father was vegan all right why don't you specify what you're referring to okay you heard your brother testify that there was a rule in the house that if you didn't finish your meal you had to eat it the next meal yes and uh were you subjected to that rule more than he was yes who was the pickier eater you or your brother i was and were there occasions when um you would sit at the table for quite a long time yes and were there any occasions when you tried to throw the food away yes and on any of those occasions did you throw the food away yes and what happened after you threw the food away my father i remember one time my father went to the bathroom and i couldn't finish the string beings or the meat and i threw it in the garbage and when he came back he saw my plate was empty so he went to the garbage and he found it in there and were you forced to eat it yes and when was your mother present yes you testified before that you had nightmares when you were a child sometimes for two three months in a row is that right yes and do you recall any times when you would leave do you recall leaving your bed like sleepwalking yeah i had a strange thing with sleepwalking sometimes i'd be aware of it sometimes i wouldn't did your mother have a particular way in which she would arouse you or wake you from your nightmares yes and what was that method uh she'd put me in the bathtub underneath the cold water and how did would you feel it when she was putting you in the bathtub i thought she was part of the the nightmares that i was having and i thought she was one of the monsters that was getting me and i would fight against her and so she'd have to drag me to the bathtub what was your first waking awareness when this would happen being in the bathtub with the cold water so you'd be clothed or naked or what i would be in my underwear and my t-shirt in a tub of cold water yes do you recall um being sent by your mother to strike that being sent by your parents to sports camp yes and do you recall um a year when you were sent to the lawrenceville tennis camp yes did you want to go no did you make the fact that you didn't want to go known to either of your parents uh yes it was really my mother who was doing the sending my dad had just said you're going so that was it all right please specify when okay do you recall in 1980 when you were going on 10 being sent to lawrence yes and um did you let your mother know that you didn't want to go yes did you get sent anyway yes was this an occasion when you were being sent to camp and your brother was not going to the same camp yes you know i haven't i'd like to mark 273. all right let's leave that at 1 30. we'll be in recess until 1 30 ladies and gentlemen don't discuss this matter with anyone don't form any final opinions about it and we'll resume at 1 30. now in that letter does your mother make reference to your attitude about going to camp jackson calls me your honor it's to show the state of mind of the declarant not and i'm not having him read it then it's irrelevant well but did you wish to approach and discuss it i i don't want to interrupt now to do that we can get back to it later do you uh recall what uh what it was like at the lawrenceville tennis camp for you yes and what was your reaction to being at that camp i had to sleep there and i didn't want to sleep there alone because they made me sleep in a bed um apparently the person that was supposed to be in the same room with me didn't show up so i had to sleep there alone why didn't you want to sleep there alone i don't know it was just i didn't like uh sleeping in a foreign place alone it was just scary to me okay so did you try to communicate with your mother yes i told her this and the first night and i called her and i said i can't i can't sleep here i'm very scared and she said it's a sleepover camp you have to sleep there and did you have any other efforts to contact her yes i called her several times the first night because i couldn't sleep i was having bad nightmares and she just told me to stop embarrassing her because there are people around just to sleep there and she'll deal with me in the morning and did you call her the next morning yes and did she talk to you then yes and what we see what were the conversations like the next morning uh the next morning she said that she would be there in the afternoon to uh to deal with me she was not happy and uh i told her that i would try to make it through um but it was just difficult for me to sleep there at night now had you been to a camp before this yes you remember your brothers testifying that he would get very homesick and lonely at camp and call home yes and that your mother would refuse to accept his calls yes did anything like that ever happen to you yes and was that at the same camp that your brother was at or a different camp at the same camp so did she refuse to accept collect calls from you as well overall yes i would call her several times and ask her if i could come home and eventually she just started refusing the calls now on this occasion though when you were lawrenceville by yourself did she accept all your calls yes and did she wind up coming to get you yes and what was her demeanor and how did she talk to you when she came to get you she was extremely unhappy and uh would grab me by the arm and put me in the car and we drove away i didn't even stay the entire camp i don't believe how many days were you there i was only there one night but i don't believe i ever went back to the camp during the day in other words it was a sleepover camp but you could stay there during the day and just i mean just stay there during the day and not sleep overnight in other words you could sleep at home at night yes but she never took you back there i don't believe so well did she say anything to you when she was picking you up about how it made her feel yeah she said she was extremely embarrassed and that uh just that she was very embarrassed and she was very upset she was embarrassed about what about the fact that i would call her and was too much of a [ __ ] to be able to sleep at night that her own son was not able to do that now mr mineta is focusing on focusing you on the years in pennington was it routine for your mother to drive you to school in the morning yes was it typical for her to pick you up after school yes and generally speaking did she tend to have the same demeanor or be in the same kind of mood on most days when she'd pick you up from school yes and could you describe for us what her mood would be like on most days when she picked you up from school very rushed very fragile very upset did you know what she was upset about no she was upset she was almost always upset whenever dad wasn't around um and and she was just upset almost every day of her life and how would she what was her mood or attitude towards you and your brother she was she took it out on us well what do you mean she took it out on you well she would pull up to the curb in a hurry she drove real fast and she would screech to the curb and she would tell us to get in and then she would drive us we had to go to tennis and northeast record club for a long time and and she would be real harsh in the car whenever we made a sound she'd tell us to shut up or she would swing around and hit us and we just had to be still in the car most of the time because most of the time she was upset and she didn't want anything to bother her especially lyle and i so did you enjoy these rides with your mother in the afternoons no i hated it i much preferred it when i was able to take the bus every once in a while and how would she drive she drove very fast and was fast the only distinctive characteristic of her fast reckless she just she was always late so she was always in a hurry to get some places so she would run stoplights if no one was coming and she would do different things did she ever drive in a way that made you feel your life was in danger yes and what were those things that she did i remember many times she was not concentrating or paying attention and getting onto uh in new jersey they had highways where you actually just got onto a stoplight and she would go on the wrong side of the road and we would be screaming or she wouldn't see a stop light and so she would slam on her brakes and the car would do a 180. a 180. it would turn all the way almost facing the other direction by the time the steering wheel stopped it was a big station wagon and would you try to uh to say things to her about her driving mom slowed down mom you're on the wrong side of the road well when we were on the wrong side of the road yes otherwise definitely not because when you said something she just snapped at you she got really uh harsh with you did you understand as a child what it was that was making your mother so angry at you no i had no idea now you mentioned at one point in your testimony that um your mother would make you take the blame for things do you remember that yes is there an incident that you remember like that involving tennis rackets yes okay yeah okay could you tell us about that incident um first of all how old were you when this particular incident occurred i believe i was 12. okay and uh she had forgotten my tennis rackets we were on the way to attend this tournament it was a friday afternoon because it was the first round it was right after school and i had to obviously have my tennis rackets but what she'd do is she'd pick me up from school with my tennis clothes if i wasn't wearing them that day and my tennis rackets and on the way there i noticed that she had forgotten the tennis rackets what were you doing on the way there i was changing i believe in the car yes and you noticed that your tennis rackets weren't there yes i looked in the back where they usually were to make sure she had the right rackets and this and that and there were no records and what did that mean to you that meant that i was going to probably have to borrow somebody else's racket i said well what did that mean to you man i was probably going to lose why because tennis racket is very specialized and if you don't have your own strong at the right tension and the right size and the right grip you're not going to play nearly as well and what did it mean to you that you knew in advance or thought in advance that you were going to lose what consequences if any would that have well if i lost first round in the middle states tournaments i was going to be punished by dad and i was afraid of that okay so when you noticed that the rackets were missing what if anything happened i asked mom where the tennis rackets were i said mom where are the tennis rackets and she said aren't they back there and uh i said no they're not back here and she says well you're just going to have to borrow a record when you get there and what happened i lost did you borrow a racket when you got there yes and you lost yes and was there a conversation with your mother in the car on the way home yeah i wanted to know what we were going to say to dad because i was i believe i was seated number two in this tournament i was one of the top four and i lost in the first round and i wanted to know what we were going to say to dad because well what do you mean why wasn't dad just going to be told your mother forgot the rackets and you couldn't win playing with a different racquet i i was going to find out if that's what was going to be said i was asking mom what are we going to say dad what are we going to tell dad happen she said well you're just going to have to say you forgot the rackets there's nothing else we can say i couldn't just tell them that i played badly there had to be a reason why i lost to this unranked kid well was it because you played badly or was it because you didn't have your rackets well i played badly because i didn't have my rackets and so i was asking her what are we going to do and she said you're just going to have to say you left him at school she didn't say i'll say i forgot them well i asked what i said dad's not going to be very happy that i left my racquets at school and she got really angry uh she was angry that i lost and she got really angry she said well we're not going to say that i left my records we're not going to say what you popped she said that she wasn't going to say that that i definitely couldn't say that she had left her rackets at home because dad was going to be even less happy with her than angry with me is that what she said yes what did you expect your father to do if he heard that you lost the first round of this tournament because you had left your rackets at school we did i was 12. what did you expect your father to do i thought he was going to use the belt and do what with it and hit me so uh did you say to your mother but but mother if if you tell dad that i lost the rackets he's going to beat me with the belt did you say that to her no definitely not i why didn't she say that to her because mom was the one that usually told on me anyway when bad things happened so that she wouldn't get punished and i definitely wasn't going to say mom if you do this dad's going to use the belt on me because she'd go right home and say that i told her that to dad i don't understand she'd go right home and tell dad what that i told her that that you complained about his beating you yes and that you just didn't do well had you ever had a conversation with your father about whether or not your mother was a friend yes and do you recall how old you were approximately when you had that talk with your father all right that was right around when the violent stuff started to happen it was 11. okay and what was the nature of that conversation with your father i mean what was it that was said generally dad was telling me it offered for the state of mind of the witness yes it is your honor for that purpose thank you dad was telling me not to tell mom something i don't remember what it was the only thing that stuck out is that he said to me mom's not your friend she's mine just remember that remember that for what purpose never to tell mom anything that happened between dad and i or complained to mom because mom would tell him and when your father told you that your mother was his friend and not yours did that um was that contrary to your experience as a child or did that seem to match your experience as a child no that definitely matched my experience and over the years did that appear to become less true or more true more and more true definitely in california i mean it's stuck out in california now were there other kinds of behavior of yours that your mother routinely told your father about yeah yeah definitely uh usually in swimming or tennis uh okay why don't we start with swimming what kind of well you practiced your swimming didn't you yes did you work hard to learn swimming i guess you don't know yes i worked hard i mean do you remember being lazy or do you remember training hard no i usually was training hard because either my mother or my father was there when they weren't there sometimes i was lazy how did you like swimming i hated the cold water and were there things that you would try to do to avoid having to be in the cold water yes and what were the things that you'd try to do i would pretend to have lost my bathing suit i would hide out in the bathroom i would i would just do different things to stall or try not to get there would you ever just cry and tell your mother you didn't want to continue to swim you were too cold or you were uncomfortable that was after i had already been swimming and the water was freezing and i would just start crying because i couldn't take it and what would she do if you were crying because you were uncomfortable she would tell me to stop embarrassing her and uh she would she would tell me that if you keep this up we're going to go home and i'm going to tell your father that that we were we had to leave because you were crying or she would put a towel over my head so no one would see her she was very put a towel over your head so no one would see her no so no one would see me crying okay does it embarrass her yeah she really she really didn't like it when i cried in public now did she routinely tell your father if you had not been participating in swimming to the extent she wanted you to yes and would you get punished for that yes now did she also tell on you with respect to tennis practice when i didn't follow out the written orders that my dad had passed down and would she tell on you having to do with just ordinary things during the day yes your honor i have another exhibit i'd like to mark 274. i may approach yes mr menendez does this appear to be a list of nine things yes and who wrote that piece of paper i did and do you recognize what that piece of paper was for yes and what was it for um it was for my dad and what is it it's a list of all the things that my mother had me write down that i didn't do right on a particular day yes and what was going to happen with that list she was going to give it to my dad did you just read the top entry what eric did and what's the first thing on it um number one yeah i know what is it uh at home eric would not eat on i i'm not sure what that word is would not eat on time or tape okay and number two is at home eric would not go to sleep or get his pajamas on and is it similar kinds of things all the way down yes now when one of these lists of things that you did wrong was given to your father uh what would his reaction be he would punish me and uh would the punishments vary depending on well whatever yes it depended how bad the list was this list wasn't as bad as some yes what punishment would you expect from this list this list he would give me a long lecture would probably slap me a couple of times i don't know this is not built no punishment list okay now i'd like to turn your attention if i could to when the family was in california let's strike that i'd actually like to do something else first i'd like to turn your attention to your relationship with your brother okay you heard your brother testify that when you were quite small probably around five he did something to you yes and how did you feel about him when those things were going on i didn't like him i didn't like him at all i uh i didn't want those things to happen and were were there other things that he was encouraged to do to you by your father that made you not like him also yes what things would he do with your father's encouragement sustain did you hear your father egging him on to do things yes what would he go on to do when lau and i were rough housing he would to allow where he should grab my joints so that it hurt most where he should hit me different things like that and uh did lyle hit you and grab you when you were little um yes so um was he your favorite person during those years he wasn't my favorite person did he eventually become your favorite person in the family yes did your relationship with him over the years change yes now you said that uh based on these things that he did to you that he talked about that you didn't like it and didn't like him did your attitude about those things and him change eventually and what changed them do you understand what i'm talking about yes i resent it now for a few years uh because of the things that he had done to me and once um the things with dad started to happen then i felt real guilty about that you felt guilty about what representing lyle why did you feel guilty about resenting lyle when i take it you mean the sexual things with your father were happening yes so why did you feel guilty about resenting lyle because i thought that this was supposed to be natural when my dad explained to me why it was supposed to be and lyle didn't explain to me any of those things and so i thought that it wasn't you thought it wasn't when lyle did it and then when your father i realized that it was and i felt guilty for resenting wow okay now did there come a time in your life when lyle began to intercede on your behalf particularly with your father yeah there came a time when i'll start intercede for me with all kinds of things okay well let's start out though with with this was there a time that lyle rescued you from drowning yes and would you tell us how that came about uh dad lal and i dad took us out on the sunfish he had this little uh sailboat for the lake and the lake was had a big ground part and he would take us out into the middle of the lake on this particular occasion he wanted lol and i from the middle of the lake to swim to shore now before you go on had your father told you scary stories about the lake yeah it took me a while to get to that one yeah okay and this is not being offered for the truth your honor but for the witnesses state of mind what stories did your father tell you about the lake he would tell me about the snapping turtles and the lake which weren't really stories i mean they were true okay but uh go ahead nothing what would he tell you about the snapping turtles in the lake he would just tell me about how snapping turtles would bite people in the lake and and he would have a lot of fun while he was telling the stories and and then he would you know jokingly try to push right after one of the stories lyle orion to the water and it was wasn't that bad it was just uh scary when you actually had to be in the lake okay now on this particular occasion when your brother rescued you um you said you were in the center portion of the lake and your father wanted you to swim from there to the shore yes you want to dial and i okay and did you feel you could do that i wasn't sure i'd never done it before you know how old you were i i think it was eight okay nine okay so what happened um he had lyle go in first and and swim and then after a while he had me not after but right after and so lyle swam and i didn't want to but he got me in the water and i started to swim how'd he get you in the water he pushed me in the water i'm sorry he pushed me in the water he being your father yes okay go on and uh about halfway there i didn't feel i was gonna make it and by the time i got even more there i i started to uh i started to swallow in water and it made me real scared and i was just pushing with the water and then i i thought of the snapping turtles and i just panicked and what did you do i started screaming for help and what happened and lyle uh swam back over and grabbed me and lifted me up in the water and then just took me to shore so it's gonna be all right so he was able to get you ashore yes and what happened after that my dad sailed over to the shore and was not happy what do you mean when you say your dad was not happy he was extremely upset he grabbed us he threw us on the boat he told lyle never to remember to do that again that i should have been able to make it and then i would have been able to make it he just didn't give me a chance to make it and that he shouldn't be you know helping me like that and then what happened he took the ally out onto the middle of the lake and had lau swim to the other side of the shore and then had me swim to the other side and what was that swim like for you was hard i knew i had no choice but to make it at this point and i just did it real slow and i did it now this was after you had started competitive swimming wasn't it yes were you afraid on when you were put into the water in the lake yes and did you communicate that fear to your father i don't remember doing so but i'm pretty sure i did do you remember an earlier time in muncie when you were having trouble in a swimming pool yes when you were going under several times yes how old were you then it was before anything started happening with dad so i must have been five maybe four and was your father at the side of that pool when you were having trouble in the water yes and eventually did somebody yeah a stranger just reached over and grabbed me and lifted me up out of the water because i was just screaming for help but not your father no my father wanted to see if i could make it do you recall an incident where your father uh physically assaulted you on the home tennis court yes do you re you know how old you were when that occurred no was it before or after your brother rescued you from the lake it was much after it was i guess i must have been i was starting to play tennis so i was probably 11 or 12. and by the time you were 11 or 12 did you feel that um your brother was your friend yes he had uh my relationship with my brother began to change when i was eight and nine he was starting to protect me a lot from other kids and i was still weary about the relationship but why were you leery about the relationship just because um law and i would roughhouse a lot together and he would pick on me a lot as the younger brother and dad would egg him on and i sort of looked at dad and lyle as the same when i was real young okay now by the time you're 11 or 12 that's changed yeah because he would do things for me like at school or at different places can you remember mr menendez the first time it occurred to you that your brother was on your side with respect to your parents with respect to my parents yeah yes and what was that incident the first time you felt he was your ally uh that was when i was 11. i had uh i was studying for final exams in uh sixth grade and there was a house being built down the street and my parents had left the house and so i went outside just to kick around the soccer ball with velvet my dog and uh i heard some noises coming and so i went down the street to see who it was and it was brendan um a kid that i i knew and uh is was brendan a kid that you were friends with when you were at hopeville hopewell valley school yeah did he live in the neighborhood yeah was he in fact your only friend in the whole neighborhood yes sister and the answer is stricken did you have any friends besides brendan in the neighborhood no okay so you found brendan inside the house yeah and he was playing with um two other uh girls inside the house um it was a new house being built so anyway the police showed up as almost as soon as i got there and i not being aware of the situation didn't get out of the house quick enough um but i ran uh because i was scared and the police got brendan and i and asked us where we lived and uh i told him where i lived and brendan went to his house and he told me to go back to my house and the police was going to go talk to my parents and so i hid out in the forest and i heard the policeman talking to my brother okay what did your brother uh so you heard the policeman telling your brother that you had been in this house yes okay and what happened after that that told you that lyle was your i heard the policeman saying allow that a little kid like me at the time should not be in this house because there could be he said hobos and bums at the time and uh and i was just so afraid that lyle was gonna tell mom and dad i was sure of it and i figured that he had to and uh so i didn't say anything to lyle and lyle didn't say anything to me and uh i wrote out a big long entry in my journal and left it on the table so that my parents would see it before they got really angry at me and understand the situation i don't understand you wrote an entry in your journal about what about what happened that night where you would just pretending it was my diary but leaving it open on the table so that you could explain how you wound up in the house so i knew my mom would snoop and read so she would just read it and understand what happened before lyle told mom and dad what happened okay and but he never did and you did that for what purpose why did you want her to know what happened before lyle told her so that i wouldn't get punished as bad okay so what happened lyle never told mom and dad and how did that make you feel about him it began i began to realize that lyle was on my side now let's go back then to the tennis court when you're 11 or 12. what happened between yourself and your father that day i was on the same side of the court with lyle i went with a dad and ly was on the other side and i wasn't moving my feet enough i had to keep my feet moving for all the time i was on the tennis court and i was tired and i was dragging my feet finally he just got too angry with me after telling me enough times to move my feet who's he my father okay so he just grabbed me and lifted me up onto the fence a few feet off the ground and ripped my shirt and lyle came running over and he wasn't going to interfere with dead but he just said it's okay it's okay calm down quietly behind dad dad didn't hear me he's he's making this gesture to whom to me to try to calm you down yeah i was crying and why do you think he was trying to calm you down because he loved me objection sustained the answer's trigger would your father react in a certain way if you were crying versus if you weren't crying he was angry yes if i wasn't crying it wouldn't be as bad and so he was trying to get me to stop crying so dad wouldn't okay and what happened after that uh dad threw me in the basement and just lectured me uh nothing really happened that bad and why does this stick out in your mind why is this so significant that your brother did this because the incidences where my brother helped me either with other people or with my mom and dad just really stuck out in my mind i don't know why okay okay was there another incident with your father that involved some plate glass doors yes and how did that what was that about dad was again angry at me um because i wasn't playing well in the tennis court and he was over my shoulder yelling at me in my ear and i just said all right or right and he just not something you're supposed to do and and he just grabbed me and slammed me into the glass and what happened the glass shattered and he just grabbed me again and slammed me through it all the way until the glass broke and i fell on my butt was your mother home when this happened she was in the kitchen and a dough did she respond to it at first she jumped up not knowing what happened and then she saw it was just dad throwing me through the glass so she didn't say anything and was the glass cleaned up yes i did that right did someone uh order you to clean it up or did you dad told mom to tell me to clean up the glass and did that happen yes was lyle there on that occasion [Applause] i don't remember lyle being there was lyle someone you admired as a child yes very much so why because he was bigger he was uh smarter he was better looking he was it was everything that i wanted to be according to my parents and according to me you did want to be like him yes you admired and did you feel from 11 on that he was a good brother to you overall yes now i'd like to turn your attention to when the family moved to california you've heard a lot of different witnesses including your brother testify about your parents uh relationship over the years is that right yes now did you notice any significant differences in first of all the relationship between your parents after the move to california oh yes and did you notice any significant difference in the way your mother related to you after you moved to california yes let's start with this when you first got to california you said you lived in the oakwood apartments yes and that was the time when you said your parents were talking about divorce and and affairs and your mother was crying a lot right yes at some point mr menendez did the discussion about divorce stop yes and at some point did you notice a difference in the way your mother talked to your father yeah the whole the whole relationship in the family sort of changed okay would you tell us first of all what was different uh basically my mom's behavior and my dad's behavior toward my mom okay let's start with that the way your mother behaved towards your father and the way your father behaved towards your mother all right can you put it down a little bit can you give me a time is this something that after we moved to california i would say as soon as the divorce start stopped they started they stopped talking about the divorce how long after you moved to california did they stop talking divorce at least to the extent you could hear it six months okay so after the first six months you notice this difference in their relationship yes and would you describe what was different my mom was my mom was very depressed a lot and crying a lot but she also got a lot more angry uh than she had done before and she got a lot more angry at dad more vocal toward dad and dad would back down um he wouldn't fight her before he used to just go and hit her uh but now he would just back down and not yell back so much sometimes he'd go all right kitty all right but he wouldn't really uh be aggressive with her was that different than kitty which is what he used to do well he he did that when he got so angry that he he was really really angry with her but it happened very very infrequently in the earlier days would he just cut her off like that all the time he would cut her off or he would just yell at her and i mean it depended if we were in the house and there were there were two different types if we were in the house he would yell at her and he would get angry at her and he would hit her if we were outside and she was yelling or saying things that he did not want her to say to different people then he would shut her up like that that's the earlier times now we're in california now she's yelling at him and he's backing down he would always do that though he would always say kitty if he he didn't want her to to do things okay but i'm talking about now in california she's yelling at him and he is backing down you said yes and that's different yes it's different and what did you think was the was had caused this difference well i had suspected that it had to do with the divorce and louise okay and you you suspected what about the divorce and louise divorce stop and talk excuse me divorce talk had stopped yeah what did you think this meant i didn't exactly know what it meant because i didn't understand why it would be the relationship would change to the extreme that it did over just this eight year affair that dad i mean he had dead had a serious affair and mom found out and she said basically from the parts that i could hear through the wall that if if they divorced she would she would uh he would not want to get a divorce but it seemed too drastic a change i didn't quite understand what it fully meant when you were growing up did your mother appear to be um afraid of your father and not afraid of your father afraid of my father did she appear as afraid of your father in california no not at all now you have described and many other people have described that that your mother would have these um very severe outbursts in the early years in pennington yes okay did she have similar outbursts in california yes and were they less frequent in california more frequent i would say more frequent when your mother would have these outbursts i mean all the way through would she necessarily be rational in the things she was angry about or the things she was saying definitely not um a lot of things started to change with with that uh with what with with mom and her moods and she she became a lot less rational i for the first for the first time i saw her drinking a lot more than she had before she was taking a lot of drugs and a lot of the pills that she had to take and she just became severely irrational at times would she say things that made no sense she would say and do things that made some sense okay now the last summer the summer of 1989 i think you've already testified that you noticed that she was not taking her medication yes rephrase the question okay did you notice a change in your mother's pill taking over that last summer yes and what was the change she wasn't taking her medication she wasn't taking the pills yes and did that improve her level of uh was she calmer was she more rational without the medication no she i wanted her to start taking it i didn't say that to her but i didn't like the fact that she wasn't taking it because her moods became worse you said you wouldn't say that to her why wouldn't you say it to her because i didn't want to be the subject of her of her harshness again um i just didn't want to focus too much attention on me i try to do that as little as possible did you ever have the kind of relationship with your mother where you could talk to her about personal things no now when was it mr menendez when you first heard anything about your mother um and poison in the calabasas house do you remember what year yeah it was that same year that things change it was late 87 it was after i broke up with kirsten and when you were living in the beverly hills house was there an occasion when your father brought up the possibility that your mother was seeking to poison you all yes now didn't that seem kind of bizarre to you the idea that your mother would poison you when didn't you just reject that out of hand it's impossible no i i pretty much by that time thought my mother was capable of anything i mean that was that was after she bought the gun and said what she said there i mean i i knew my mom was pretty she was very suicidal she was very depressed and she was capable of anything because she was very angry well did you think she was capable of killing herself yes and did she think you think she was capable of killing other people whoever she was angry with at the time so she was both depressed and angry yes when you were uh a child and a teen living back east were you afraid of your mother i was afraid but pretty much just afraid of her outbursts um afraid of getting hit [Music] not of anything like that well during those last months in california did you become afraid of your mother in a different way well i i became i was afraid of my mother living in in the beverly hills house when she stopped taking her medication for sure but before then i mean when dad said to me what he said in may he he was i knew he was taking it seriously and uh he didn't think she was gonna do anything right away but he just thought that he would he would threaten me with it and uh but my question is you said that earlier you were afraid of your mother's anger okay now were you afraid of her say the last year yes was it the same fear were you just afraid of her anger or was it a different kind of fear than in pennington yes oh yes much different and what was the difference and she could hurt me uh on on purpose rather than by accident when i was in bennington she would throw things at me and or she would do things and if i got hit in the head it would be by accident i knew she didn't mean to do that even though she did it but in california it was different i knew she could do things on purpose now you've discussed a difference in the relationship between your parents okay where your mother did not seem to be afraid of your father anymore was there a difference in the way your mother treated you yes and could you just generally summarize what that difference was in california she wouldn't protect me from dad anymore in this at all in fact she would usually take his side and things okay now i haven't heard much about and we haven't heard much about her protecting you from dad before also let's not ask questions that way what what do you mean by her protecting you anymore when had she protected you well it wasn't i don't i don't remember what i just said but before she would when dad would get angry at me she would sometimes say jose she would not get involved and she would allow dad to do what she did now she would take an active role is what i'm trying to say she join in with him yes did she seem to be more like dad's ally in california or more like his ally in new jersey yes did your mother seem to be more or less um like your father's ally when you lived in california uh more in pennington she wasn't dad's ally she she was afraid of dad and she would lie and to get me in trouble to get the trouble off her which i understood um but in in california it was different she was more joined with that okay and now if we couldn't mr menendez turning to that thursday night that last thursday night when your mother told you that she knew what your father had been doing with you all those years do you remember that mistakes how did you interpret the things that your mother said to you in the den that thursday night when you were on your way to the guest house that she knew about dad and i and that she had known that she had all she said she had always known okay and she always meant all those years didn't it i really objection sustained that what did that mean to you that she knew and that she had known and she had always known she said i really wasn't thinking about all of those years i just thought about the fact that she knew that my dad was doing this all the time and i couldn't i i was in shock now when after you talked to your brother that thursday night and you found out what he had said to your father and you felt that you were going to be killed okay what did you think was your mother's interest in keeping the secret secret she had a big big interest my mom in california had become really the image had been a big thing with her she liked to cater parties she liked to have parties at the beverly hills house and this would destroy everything that she had ever worked for did you think her interest was any different than your father's interest in keeping of course not so it was the same yes it's about keeping the secrets [Applause] now mr menendez i want to return you back to sunday night august 20th 1989. okay okay yes i think we stopped before when the police arrived at the house and do you recall what emotional condition you were in when the police arrived at the house i was hysterical was that genuine hysteria yes and do you know what had caused it excuse me do you know what had caused it what maybe seeing my parents i think also shooting them caused it just the whole night were you happy about what you had done no it was beginning to hit me what i had done uh when i went back to the house that night and i i couldn't i couldn't accept that my question was were you happy with that no i was not happy have you ever been happy about it no now on the way back to the house from santa monica did you and your brother discuss the things that you were going to tell the police once you called them yes did you discuss not calling the police and just leaving town no did you discuss let's go back home and make it look like a burglary no did you discuss let's go back home get the guns from the closet load them up and stick them in the den overall you understand the question no did you discuss with your brother well let's go back to the house let's go up to mom's closet let's get the rifles let's load them up let's stick them down in the den and make it look like they were so you didn't think of any of those things no what were the three things that you and your brother discussed telling the police that we went to the movies okay that's one that we council is there's some reason to believe that they're just three i want to rephrase the question were there just three points that you wanted to make with the police i don't really remember how many points how many points there were there were all right tell us what the things were that you and i were going to say to the police that we went to the movies and then we went to meet perry at the civic center and um i remember lyle just that you went to the movies yes that you went to meet perry at the civic and then i went home from id right said it no there's one other what's the one other um he told me to say that we parked in the back okay so there were four things yeah i guess that's all yeah four things the thing is you told the police that you parked in front you did park in front yes so you didn't tell the police you parked him that is that a question did you tell i'm sorry did you tell the police you parked in bed yes but your car's parked in front gosh let's not argue ask a question i don't understand perhaps i'm not understanding did you park the car in front when you went back when we went back yes but that's not what i'm talking about i'm talking about when we left the house la wanted me to have it very clear that we parked in back because he figured that somebody had to have seen us run out of the house that night okay so you're saying that you were supposed to tell the police that when you that when you um left your house that night to go to the movies you pulled out from the bath yes okay and did you go over and over on the ride home these four things that you were supposed to tell the police no not at all i was worried well you were worried about whether you could tell them that story weren't you sustained were you worried about whether you could tell that story yes uh were you worried yes i was worried about that and why were you worried about that because i was not thinking very clearly and uh i didn't know what would come out of my mouth at that time and did your brother appear to be worried about whether he'd be able to tell the story he he was worried about that but he was also worried on the way down the station whether he asked me are you going to be able to do this if you're not let me know did you go over the points no you remember going back to the car after you were at the police station later that morning in order to see to remove anything that was left in it that's why we went back yes and do you remember doing this and do you remember finding anything you personally inside the car we didn't we weren't allowed access to the car right away yes eventually were you we went back at 5 30 and then they told us to come back and uh we did around eight and we found some things yes yes did you personally find something in the car yes yes what did you find uh an empty shell and where was that empty shotgun shell underneath the front seat underneath the front seat so it was in the passenger compartment of the car yes now you were interviewed at the police station by sergeant edmonds you remember him yes and how did he treat you he was very nice and at the end of your interview with him oh and did you remember the four things you were supposed to tell him yes and when you finished talking to him um and you left his company did you say something to your brother yes and what was the point of your saying what you said to your brother so that he would know that i didn't tell them what happened and then i just told him i told sergeant edmunds what worked out the four things yes i just said it's okay you can go and talk to him i didn't uh yes i made it through that was the signal correct okay objection sustained the answer is stricken was that a scenario would move a lot quicker if you would not ask these leading questions and just ask it in a different form maybe we would maybe not your counsel just do it in a legally uh proper fashion yeah i think we need a break frankly well let's go ahead a little farther here well may i approach a little further okay now at the end of the tape with sergeant edmonds uh do you recall what happened to you emotionally yes what i broke down okay and was that real yes and do you remember asking him something yes and what did you ask him i asked him if my uh my parents were dead why'd you ask him that because i wanted to hear it from a police officer i had trouble accepting that but you knew they were dead i knew they were dead but i there's something it was just i couldn't accept that did you think that you were in good shape mentally and emotionally after i wasn't now on september 17 1989 you were interviewed by detective zoller in new jersey yes i was and did you tell a detective zoller basically the same four-point story uh yes on september 17th and for striker i'm sorry all right we'll take our recess let council gather their materials and we'll resume at uh three o'clock we'll be recessing at 4 20 to accommodate uh an appointment to one of the jurors so um we'll resume at three o'clock and hopefully go until 4 20. laden court of the statement that you gave to detective zoller on september 17 1989 is that right yes and where were you when you uh gave that interview at my aunt terry's house and were you expecting detective zoeller to be there yes and were you awake when he came to the house yes now do you remember in the course of that interview with detective zoller telling him and i'm referring to the prosecution version of the transcript page 10. telling him that when you and your brother return to the house on sunday august 20th there was a lot of smoke in the room yes now in fact mr menendez did you know on september 17th that when you and your brother returned from santa monica there was no longer any smoke in the room yes do you have any idea why you told detective zoller that there was smoke in the room no now there was smoke in the room at the end of the shooting correct rephrase the question was there smoke in the room after the shooting was over yes did you also tell detective zoller and this refers to page 11 that when you and your brother return to the house you could smell smoke in the house yes now did you know in fact that the smoke was gone so of course you couldn't have smelled it yes did you in fact on september 17th tell detective zoller that you smell the smoke every day every day i remember the smoke yes did you tell him in describing the smoke it was just a slow haze the room was like dark yellow it was like a full slick haze yes is that what it looked like to you at the end of the shooting uh yes it did not look like that to you though did it when you came back rephrase the question did it look like that when you came back no now in fact mr menendez as of september 17th had you been seeing and smelling smoke every day as you told detective zola yes and did you continue to see and smell smoke after september 17 for a long time after how often many times a day whenever i would hear a car engine and i would smell the smoke of the of the fumes when sometimes when someone was cooking anytime there was smoke i smelled it and i thought about it did you also picture what it looked like in the room after the shooting oh yes every day and did it take anything to prompt you to picture that no did you go on picturing that even after you were arrested yes did you ever have any difficulty in stopping yourself from picturing that overall i wasn't able to stop myself from picturing it anything would spark it anything would remind me and i would see them in the room and i couldn't stop it now did you also on september 17th tell did you ask this question of detective zoller this is on page 18. did you ask him you ever figure it was someone they knew yes and were you taught you were talking there were you not about that the people who killed your parents was someone your parents knew yes because were you therefore suggesting to detectives what were you trying to suggest to him he was he was kept thinking that it was someone maybe they didn't know what i was trying to say maybe it was someone they knew do you know why you were doing that no i don't know why um i just was doing it did detective zoller follow up on this question did he start to probe you no do you recall telling him on page 28 that your life was part of your father's dream yes did you feel your life was part of your father's life i thought he lived through us yes and were you therefore telling detectives were you telling detective zola or a lie there or the truth the truth do you know why you were telling him that uh partly okay um [Music] partly because there were so many things that i was confused about and so sad about that i was i was just telling uh him a lot of things about my life um that i i felt i was trying to hide certain things but certain things just came out [Applause] remember telling him that there was some conflict with your dad in last may or april he thought that i wasn't opening up opening up in tennis yes and were you telling why were you telling that to detective zola i'm not sure it was just about the conflict i had with that so you were telling him that there was a problem yes did he did he follow up on that did detective zola follow up did he ask you about what this problem meant or how it affected you no and did you then tell detective zoller we wanted to go to college really bad we were getting away from him you know we were trying to stay away and doing other things do you remember telling him that yes who was the hymn you were trying you were telling him you were trying to get away from dad did he follow up on that did he ask you why were you trying to get away from him no do you also recall telling detective zoller this is page 35. when i was young i used to love everything i couldn't break a branch off a tree a leaf off a tree or something i used to love everything i wouldn't want to hurt anything and it seems that as one gets older they have to experience things and life is colder remember telling them that yes do you know what you were thinking about when you were telling him that in essence what were you thinking about uh that i killed my parents did he follow up on that did he ask you what do you mean life is colder what do you mean you wouldn't have wanted to hurt anything no now while you were in new jersey in september during the trip when detective zola interviewed you did you see your family doctor yes and was this the same doctor that you had seen during your childhood yes and why did you go see him because of the uh terrible pains that i had in my stomach and how how long had you been experiencing those pains in your stomach about three weeks had you experienced pains in your stomach before your parents were killed yes and for how long before about a week and they continued after yes were there other things that you were experiencing after that you had not experienced before well yes of course what things were you experiencing after your parents died could be more specific as to subject matter okay uh were there things emotional things you were experiencing after that contributed to your going to the doctor yes what were those things um just flashes of them um flashes of things that my dad used to do to me and it would just it was confusing and it would really uh just the guilt uh the thinking of what kind of a person i was really tore me apart and just made me gave me a lot of pain concerning going to see the doctor in new jersey did you have certain physical symptoms that led you to go there yes um had the pain in your stomach caused you to do or not do anything it caused me to go to the doctor okay did you lose weight mr menendez i lost a lot of weight okay did you why did you lose weight i just didn't feel like eating why didn't you feel like eating overall um because of how i felt and just how miserable i was so it was not just because of the pain in your stomach you didn't need it was also because of your mental state the pain in the stomach didn't have anything to do with not eating it all had to do with the same thing that that i had killed my parents and uh kind of how i felt about it and so i lost weight and i had this horrible pain in my stomach were you feeling sorry for yourself at this time partly were you feeling sorry for anything else yeah i was feeling very bad about killing my parents after your parents died did your relatives come in to california from out of town yes did they talk about your parents yes how did they make them sound they made them sound as if they were these incredible people and um these people that they were in awe of and these powerful and wonderful people good people yes and after being around your relatives did you start thinking about whether they were good or you were good or both yes what did you start thinking i was i was so confused i mean i had thought that they weren't these people that they were describing and uh and if these were such wonderful people then i just thought it made me a really bad person really really bad person and is that what you thought of yourself yes and did you start having a certain type of dream after your parents died and after you had been around your relatives yes mr menendez before your parents died had you received any information from your father concerning whether or not you were in his will yes and when had you received the information from your father almost the year before you recall what month it was that you received the information in september what year september 1988. and in september of 1988 what information did you receive from your father he told me that i was out of the will he told me that both of us were out of the well but he told me that i was out too and did you believe him yes he was here now in may of 1989 did you have a discussion with your mother about being disowned by your father yes now in your mind mr menendez is there a difference between being disinherited and being disowned uh i'm not sure if there was before then but certainly then there was a difference because i knew i was already disinherited so you knew you were already disinherited as of when as of september so the conversation in may with your mother what does that have to do with it had to do with me not reporting to dad uh every bit of my tennis matches and my tennis practice when he wasn't around and what was it your mother said was the effect of you're not reporting to dad every bit of your tennis he was going to disown me and what did disown mean to you i wasn't sure what it meant but uh i knew it meant something very bad because i didn't think he was gonna let me leave the house so i didn't quite know what what was gonna happen well ordinarily what would disown mean to you someone mean kicked out of the house have nothing to do with you okay and did you think that was going to happen i couldn't imagine that was going to happen that's what worried me why did it worry you well because if that wasn't going to happen then something else equally something else was going to happen that was equally the same i i assumed that was bad and i didn't know what was going to happen why didn't you think it meant that he would kick you out of the house because i knew there was no way he was going to let me leave the house with me knowing all these things about him i didn't think that for a second you didn't think he'd just throw you out on the street when you had the secret of course not objections objection sustained the answer is strong what was it that made you think he wouldn't kick you out of the house again is this his thought in may of 89 yes your honor okay let's phrase it in that fashion okay in may of 1989 why was it that you did not think your father would just kick you out of the house because my father wasn't just going to let me leave with this information he was never going to just kick me out of the house that that was not a possibility and so obviously i knew that so did you have any idea what disney meant no that's what i was worried about but it worried you yes now after your parents died did you receive information that you had not in fact been disinherited yes and who did you receive that information from my aunt martha and do you recall how it came about that you received information from your aunt martha she was talking to lyle and i at one of the hotels and uh telling us what the the financial things were of the estate what the assets were yes and do you recall when you heard her do you recall saying something to her well i told her that overall i told her that we weren't in the will so it didn't matter in terms of relating to us because she was saying how we were going to be set up to go to college and be able to live and i said martha you know you may have to talk to my grandmother whoever was going to inherit because i told her what happened between my dad and i right let me back up okay what is she trying to tell you that we're going to inherit this you're going to inherit the money okay she's trying to tell you how much yes she's trying to tell you what to do again ask him she was telling me that that there were certain life insurance policies that that how much this house was worth and this house was worth and how much my dad owed here she was telling me all kinds of things that i wasn't completely understanding but i was just telling her there's no reason for me to there's no reason for you to walk completely understand it when she was trying to explain what i didn't understand because it didn't really matter to me anyway i mean i was interested in it but it it wasn't going to come to me so is that what you were telling her that wasn't going to come to you yes okay and did you explain to her why it wasn't going to come to you yes i told you what my father told me and that was what that we were out of the will and in that same discussion with your aunt martha was there also a discussion about insurance yes and can you recall what the discussion about insurance was uh she was telling us about different insurance policies that my father had uh one of them in particular i remember because i had heard about it before okay what was that that was this company insurance it was a five million dollar insurance and is that a policy that your father had no he did not have that and how did you know that because my mom and him used to talk about the fact that he needed to take this exam to get it and uh and that he was going to soon going too soon as of when he was going to in september i believed had you heard that at home that he was going to take an exam yes he was trying to get mom off his back he said i'm planning on taking in september just because mom and him were discussing it often so what was your state of mind with respect to the five million dollar policy did he have it or did he not have it he didn't have it and was there any doubt in your mind about that no i knew he didn't have it he was going to get it the next month and did your aunt martha nevertheless bring this up as a possible asset i don't know if she completely understood that he didn't have it or i'm not sure what what was in her mind but i was telling her uh what was in my mind and uh she's she wasn't someone that she she was stubborn in that respect saying no no this is the situation i was saying no it wasn't and finally i just gave up you were trying to tell her it didn't exist yes did she talk to you about another insurance policy yes and was that something you knew about before no and what was your reaction when she told you there was another insurance policy i said great you know but i was trying to tell her that it wasn't going to us so he can have 6 million insurance policies and it didn't matter was she telling you it was a six million dollar insurance policy no what was she telling you it was a six hundred thousand dollar policy i believe and you were telling her that you wouldn't be getting that yeah she was saying that we were going to get it within 10 days or in a short amount of period and i was telling her i don't think that's going to happen and she was saying it is going to happen and i was saying fine i hope it does happen but i don't think so and why did you think you wouldn't be getting the insurance because we weren't in the will so we weren't going to be getting the money did you think that insurance came through will yes now in the course of this conversation was your brother expressing similar sentiments as yours yes he was he was more exasperated because he was more concerned with with other things and uh and he didn't believe what aunt martha was telling him so he was less concerned my point is was he saying the same things yes that you guys were disinherited that he didn't that he knew there was no five million dollar policy the same things you were saying objection sustained i'd like to approach just to outline something for as far as what jury okay all right you may continue mr menendez um at some point in september did you receive some of the money from that second insurance policy that your aunt martha told you about yes and did you after that seek advice from various adults concerning what to do huh could you just tell us who the people were that you sought advice from um and martha mostly my cousin henry um there was a probate attorney named steve i talked to him a lot i just wanted to know really what to do with all this money and what to do with my life and were you seeking advice from people concerning what to do with your life in addition to what to do with the money assistant you said you were wanted to know what to do with the money and what to do with your life what do you mean when you say what to do with your life well i didn't after i wasn't able to get into princeton i didn't quite know what to do so i talked to different people about what i should do and where i was where i was and what was going on and what did you decide to do i eventually decided to hire mark as a permanent coach and to do what with your time to play tennis to play tennis for recreation or for something else i never played for recreation um to play tennis full time so play tennis full time as a career i didn't i didn't know if it was going to be a career i didn't know uh what was going to happen so i just made it for a year and see what happened the next fall whether i was going to go to college or continue in tennis i really wasn't sure were you having any difficulty in making decisions yes now at some point were you um with your cousin henry in october of 1989 when dr ozil's name came up yes and how did dr ozil's name come up in that conversation well i i had been seeing henry uh a lot and talking to him about how depressed i was and and how i thought about killing myself and different dreams that i had and he said that you know he would talk to me and um and just sit and try to come for me but he said you really need to see uh dr ozil he said that he had called dr ozil in fact and uh because because of these conversations and that he wanted me to go see him who had called dr ozil because of these conversations henry now had dr ozil been at around the family at the hotel and at the memorial service yes and had your cousin henry excuse me come in contact with him then i assume so i i don't i don't specifically remember i mean all of my relatives i think did i'm not sure and when the during the time that dr ozil was a was around you at the hotels in the memorial service did he have any conversations with you concerning financial matters yes and what did he say to you concerning financial matters just that he had this um own attorney that he thought we should hire for probate since there was a young attorney coming on to to do the estate and he said that wasn't a good idea and that we should hire his attorney and and that he had a lot of good ideas of what to do when the money came in and did he tell you what those good ideas of his were uh not specifically he just said that he had a lot of different companies and a lot of different things and a lot of great ideas and that and he brought that up with you when you were at the hotel yeah and were there discussions at the hotel about the estates the fact that there was a will that would be probated yes um i mean it it changed at first i didn't think i was in the will and so i i told him you know it's not going to us but after i found out apparently i was going to he he started talking to me a lot more and just gave me different advice he was telling me that i what i should invested in and that he had these ideas that maybe would work out really well and that i should call him mr menendez my question though was at the hotels apart from dr ozil were there discussions among the family members about the estates that's my question oh yes and were there such discussions also when dr ozil was around yes now when you're cut when your cousin henry told you that you should see dr ozil did you take that suggestion yes and what did you do i called up his secretary to get an appointment for the next day and did you talk to dr ozil before you saw him or only to his secretary i didn't talk to dr zeal before i saw her you only talked to the secretary yes now what was your reason for going to see dr ozil in october of 1989 because i was afraid i was going to kill myself and that was based on how you were feeling it was based on how i was feeling yeah obviously and the dreams that i was having and just what i was thinking and so on were these different dreams than the one you've told us about before yes and without telling us what the dream was what was the type of dream just the fact that i killed myself from the dream and how good it felt and what and how peaceful and good it felt afterwards so you were dreaming about suicide yes and were you thinking about suicide when you were awake yes and were you having any uh difficulty in dealing with your family yes i was having a lot of difficulty what was that difficulty well difficulty wasn't being around them uh them not knowing and me not being able to tell them and it just was very hard for me so uh do you recall therefore going to dr ozil's office on october 31st yes and do you recall what it was well first of all do you remember every detail of the conversations you had with him on october 31st no definitely not do you remember every detail of the conversation that you had with him on november 2nd no did you take any notes during those sessions no [Applause] did you have any reason to believe on october 31st when you were with dr ozil that it would ever matter what was said in those sessions no not really no now do you recall what the first topic was generally of your talk with dr ozil on the 31st yes and what was it it's about why i went to see him um and basically how lost i felt the weight i had lost and what i was planning on doing now and i had asked him if that was a good idea to be playing tennis and not going to school and i told him about how i was feeling and uh and just about those things well why were you asking him if it was a good idea if you should be playing tennis if you had already decided to play tennis i had decided to play tennis but i didn't know what was a good idea and what was not at that point and uh i didn't know if i'd be able to continue playing tennis i just needed to do something with my life because for two months i was doing nothing and it was was hard for me and so i was just talking to him about that and other things okay and at some point did you leave his office and take a walk with him yes at some point i asked him to go for a walk now was that planned in advance no and had you thought about doing that before you got to his office what prompted you to want to take a walk just that i was having trouble telling him about why i was suicidal since i hadn't told him that i killed my parents and and so he wasn't really getting it and uh and so i just decided that i needed to tell somebody and uh and i decided to tell him right then had you decided to tell him before you went to his office no and so it was while you were trying to explain why you were suicidal that you decided you should tell him yes what did you think did you think it would help in some way if you told him it would help um it would help in in some ways i guess i really wasn't thinking that clearly i i really wanted him at that point to tell me that i wasn't a bad person and tell me that i wasn't this horrible terrible person that i was thinking that i was and uh and he couldn't he couldn't do that unless he knew that i killed my parents okay so so you left to go on the walk yes and during the course of that walk were you considering telling him i was yes yes i was considering telling him why did you just tell him right away it was too difficult a thing to just tell him um i was afraid to just tell him and how long did it take for you to get over being afraid before you told him between a half hour and an hour i'm not sure and do you remember what he said generally after you did tell him yes and what did he say he said that i thought i was going to tell him that i had no choice but to tell him i don't understand he said you thought no no he said that he thought i was going to tell him this that he had suspected this and that i had no choice but to tell him okay and did he say anything else about your having told him he said that i had no choice and that it was something that i couldn't hold inside of me forever and do you know why he was saying those things to you at that time had you said anything about i was just telling him how guilty i felt and how i was trouble having trouble with all of my relatives and not on them not knowing and how i couldn't have a i couldn't have any type of a relationship with anybody um i was just having difficulty okay did you regret telling him the minute you did or not no okay now after you told him did you go back to his office yeah i started talking to him um on the way up about now what i was really feeling suicidal about and uh and i started going into my dreams and really explaining why i was so depressed okay and so basically you had a new talk about suicide and depression we had a new talk but a more in-depth talk i guess or at least i filled them more in why okay now at some point did dr ozil start to question you about the shooting of your parents yes now had you when you were deciding to tell him you said your purpose was so you could better explain why you were suicidal yes while you were deciding to tell him on that walk had you made up your mind about whether you would tell him the details or anything like that no i really wasn't thinking i was thinking one step at a time i wasn't really thinking in advance i just told him on an instinct that maybe this would be a good idea and i really wasn't thinking of the consequences or i wasn't thinking of lyle i wasn't i was just pretty miserable and so i just decided to tell him all right but were you thinking of telling him the details of the shooting before you told him that you had done it no so when he started questioning you about the details was that something that you had prepared to answer no when he was questioning you about the details did you tell him some of the details yeah he asked me how long i shot our parents and did you tell him how yeah and did he ask you anything else uh yeah he wanted to know what happened after that and i just basically told him what happened after that you told him about what happened that night after that is that what you mean yeah so let's not leave the witness ask him what do you mean by you told him what happened after that i told him that law and i had walked into the room with two shotguns and killed our parents and that's why i felt so guilty and i told him about what that you know what happened before we went to the police that we had dropped off the guns if we'd been at the theater we just told them different things my question was what did what did you mean by you told them what happened after that after meeting when after my parents died yes i know mr menendez but that night the next night that week that month what do you mean that night okay and did he do you remember did he seem uh interested in these details he seemed very interested in in the details he he uh he cut me off when i was talking about my depression and my suicide he said well let me just hear what happened and uh and so i told him what happened and did he ask you questions when you were telling him what happened uh informational questions yeah he was asking a lot of questions and after you told him these details what happened next he was still asking a lot of questions he asked about the guns he asked about what did he ask mahal and i went here what did he ask you about the guns he asked me where did we get these guns they asked me if we had him in the house if where we got him and so did you tell him about purchasing the guns i told him that we bought him in san diego and do you recall anything else that he asked you at that point after you told him the details of that night and told him about buying the guns anything else more than what he had asked me about the details yeah what did he do recall if he asked you anything after you told him he asked me why it happened did he ask you at any time what who knew about it yes and when in the sequence did he ask you that i think right after i think right after because i had been talking about the fact that that the the guns were on mulholland and and that uh he asked me why the police hadn't arrested us already if we had if we flown i personally bought the guns and and so i told him about what i thought the police knew and who knew what and what the situation was and did you tell him that before he asked you why yes i think so was there a discussion about lyle and lyle knowing that you were there yes and when did that come up that may have even come up before i told them about what i thought the police knew that may have come up even in the middle of me telling him the details of what happened that night well how did it come up he asked me if lal knew i was here and i said i said no i now didn't know i was here and i wasn't sure how i was going to tell lyle that i told him now that i didn't i did tell him i hadn't i hadn't thought about it and so i hadn't thought about telling him and so he said well how are you going to tell lyle and he just kept grilling me about what i was going to tell lyle how i was going to allow when i was going to tell lyle and i said i don't know maybe i shouldn't and he said no definitely you should now before he started grilling you uh about lyle and when and how and why you should tell him had it even crossed your mind in the recitation you even thought about lyle no had it even occurred to you that you might want to tell him that you had told dr ozil or might not want to tell him no as soon as i told him that that law and i did this i just i didn't think about any of those things that wasn't so would it be fair to say dr ozil seemed concerned about lyle oh yes overall yes he uh he wanted to he didn't want me to just go into lyle well had you even planned to do that i hadn't even thought about it and uh as he was asking me i was trying to think and uh and so i i uh i just said but the best i could think of what i might do okay so when this came up the the when when dr ozil brought this up and after this discussion did he uh decide to do something yes he he wanted to call lyle right away and that's what he did he got on the phone and called lyle and okay and after he called lyle did he tell you something about lyle he told me that lyle was coming over okay and at that point when he told you that lyle was coming over right after that do you recall what the conversation was that you had with dr ozil i said i don't remember exactly where in the conversation uh he called lyle i think he called him right as i was finished telling him the details or right when i was telling him about what the police knew which happened first mr menendez did you tell him about the details and then answer his questions about what did the police know yes okay and so it may have been that he called lyle after all that i'm not exactly sure did all of that come before he's asking you why or after he first asked me about the details and then he asked me why did he first ask you what does the police know yes so that did all come before him yeah i'm quite sure about that now when he asked you why what was your reaction to that question i wasn't expecting that question why not [Applause] i don't know i mean i hadn't even thought about telling him i hadn't thought about what i was going to say and it just shook me that he asked me why so i just told him what i told him well let me ask you this at that point when he asked you why was it your understanding that your brother was on his way over yes i knew i was on his own and how long ordinarily would it have taken for someone to get from your house on elm drive to dr ozil's office on bedford drive it ordinarily would have taken five minutes uh he took a little longer i started to stall and wait for him but it just kept dragging on he didn't come right away when dr ozil asked you why did you tell him no i told him i didn't know and why did you tell him you didn't know because i didn't know how to respond he was very forceful he was very aggressive and he was he was um very interested in uh you know the details and everything about it and that's not why i was there to talk to him you were there to try to what i was there to try to feel better and talk about how not to kill myself and that's not what he wanted to talk about so when you told him you didn't know why what did he start saying he asked me uh i think he asked me when we started talking about it um he asked me something about when when the idea came up or when it first occurred to lala and i or something like that okay and do you recall what you said to him yeah and what did you say i said that lal and i had had conversations that week and that was true wasn't it you had had conversations that week with your brother yes and did you tell him the nature of the conversations that you had with your brother that week i told him part of the nature of the conversations i was just really playing it by ear i was just trying to go from one sentence to the next not knowing i was going to say was there some reason why you didn't want to tell him the truth yes what i absolutely was not wanting to tell him about the sex between dad and i why because i just didn't want to discuss it with him did you want to discuss it with anybody no i wanted to get it away i was having a lot of flashbacks i was having a lot of problems dealing with it even after and i just didn't i wanted to get away from it now during the the conversations that you actually did have with your brother that week before the shooting i think you've already told us there were conversations about how the family was not close and how you wanted to be close to lyle is that right i we had those conversations that week but i didn't understand the question okay i was just asking you did you have those conversations yes and did you tell dr zeal about that that yes talk with your brother about the family not being close yes i told him about all of those things about the family a lot of the conversation that i had with lyle on on tuesday now let me ask you this mr menendez did dr ozil know your parents yes he knew them very well to the best of your knowledge had he met with them several times yes and during the time that you were talking to him was he expressing himself was he describing them to you rephrase the question i think all right it's a very vague question okay during the time that you were talking to dr ozil on october 31st was he uh telling you his opinion of your parents personalities objection what's the shame was he talking about your parents yes and in what way was he talking about your parents he was telling me about my father and why i probably did this and uh when you say he was telling you about your father what kinds of things was he i don't mean to quote him but he was telling me that my father was an extraordinarily controlling person uh i think he used the word dominating and uh basically he was saying that dad was pretty ferocious and and aggressive and uh and he was saying that nobody could live under those circumstances and uh and that's probably why i had my confusion did he seem to know your father in the way he described it yes and was he putting together characteristics of him yes characteristics you'd be right now when he would say more than characteristics uh i would say he was he was putting together what he felt my dad was the kind of person he felt yes and what was your response when he would say these things i would agree at this point i was waiting for lyle to come and uh i was just letting the conversation flow now you've heard dr ozil in court mr menendez um did he talk a great deal during this session of october 31st or was he just quiet and listening now dr ozil tended to talk in that session a lot in that session and uh what about in the next session on november 2nd did he tend to talk a lot in that session as well yeah even more at that point but he i wanted him to talk i wanted him to keep talking because at that point i had to think of reasons about why i was going to tell lyle i told dr ozil so you were somewhat distracted at that point what do you mean you had to not distracted i was very concerned that lyle was coming over um i wanted love to come over but i was also concerned that i was coming over because i knew that i had really betrayed my brother's trust and and i was thinking about lyle's going to be angry with me and he had a right to be and i just was thinking real quickly before i got there because i thought he'd be there in a minute about what i was going to tell al and uh and how i was going to explain to him that i told dr ozil okay and did lyle get there yes all right we're gonna have to take a recess i indicated that one of the jurors has to leave at three at 4 20. and we're almost there so we'll take a recess until tomorrow at nine o'clock again reminder not to discuss this case among yourselves with anyone else don't form any opinions about it and we'll resume tomorrow at nine o'clock i'll ask that council remain for a moment all right just one matter mr burt or council for both defendants indicated that they would have some briefs or cases or whatever for the court to review in regards to the attorney client privilege issue there are some cases that i will provide to the court at this point on two issues one is the 10 16 issues and the three cases that i'm studying for when the mental condition is tender it's tendering these are in addition to those that you cited in the brief that you've previously filed right and then the other three cases are on the attorney client issued specifically on the dual purpose test that the prosecution cites to the courts and then there's one out of state case then providing a copy to the court because it's very close to the facts okay you can provide all that to the clerk and to the district attorney as well obviously okay all right we'll be in recess till tomorrow at 9.

Channel: COURT TV

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Id: JZatLcsuL4U

Length: 197min 49sec (11869 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 16 2021