The parents were standing when they were shot; the medical examiner. Dr. Irwin Golden, confirmed this in his testimony at the first trial.
Dr. Ann Burgess has maintained her stance in this case; she's also a crime scene analyst and her conclusion is that it was done out of fear and the overkill at the crime scene supports that. As I've mentioned before, Lyle and Erik were always going to serve time. They've been incarcerated since 1990. An acquittal was not going to happen. If they had been convicted of manslaughter, they probably would have served 25 years - 10 years for each parent, plus a weapons charge. It was never going to be a get out of jail free card. As I previously stated, killing your abuser is not the same as targeting random or innocent people.
There's no question they were abused, IMO. There is more than enough evidence and eyewitness testimony. Dr. Burgess was not the only expert witness who came to the conclusion that the brothers were abused and in fear. Dr. John Conte, Dr. Stuart Hart, and Dr. Ann Tyler came to the same conclusion. The fact that the prosecution in the first trial chose not to call their own experts speaks volumes.
MOO
Lyle's own words:
“I really don’t have any particular memory of why I did some of these things that don’t make particular sense,” he protested when Bozanich tried repeatedly to push him beyond vague answers.
“I remember bursting into the room,” he said. “I remember some very vague things and then I remember it being over.”
Bozanich pressed him again. “When you went into that room and shot your parents, they were eating blueberries and ice cream?” she asked.
The issue of whether there were blueberries and ice cream in the room that night remains in hot dispute. Because the brothers are charged with the special circumstance of murder while lying in wait, the image of the parents enjoying such a desert would serve as a powerful suggestion of an ambush.
Defense lawyer Leslie Abramson objected to the prosecutor’s question and Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Stanley M. Weisberg sustained the objection without explanation.
Undeterred, Bozanich showed Lyle Menendez a photo of the room taken after the killings, pointing out the items on the coffee table: a glass with liquid in it, a container with a spoon and a white substance, a Michael Jackson cassette tape, a cigarette lighter and some papers from UCLA, where Erik Menendez was due to enroll within weeks.
“What on this coffee table was threatening you?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Lyle Menendez said.
Speaking of Jose Menendez, Bozanich said: “He didn’t threaten you? He didn’t have a weapon? He didn’t do anything out of the ordinary?”
“Well, yes, he closed the doors,” Lyle Menendez said, meaning the doors to the TV room. That simple act convinced him death was “more than near,” he said.
Bozanich asked if closing the doors was the “last straw.”
“It wasn’t the last straw,” he said. “It was the last thing I remember before I panicked.”
The brothers ran outside to Erik Menendez’s car, loaded their shotguns and ran back in, toward the TV room, Lyle Menendez said.
“I just remember going in, it was dark . . . someone was coming toward me on the right, like a shadow,” he said, adding that the figure turned out to be his father. He said he began firing wildly.
Jose Menendez “was not rising. He was standing. I just kept firing,” the son said.
Someone else was off to his left. “I’m not sure at what point I realized the person to my left was my mother,” he said.
After firing several shots, Lyle Menendez said, he put the 12-gauge shotgun against the back of his father’s head and pulled the trigger.
“Was he seated or standing?” Bozanich asked.
“I guess I was over him,” he said. “Because I was over a little to the side of the couch.”
“I didn’t put it up against his head on purpose,” he added. “. . . It was just a rush and me firing.”
“When you went to the area behind the sofa and unintentionally put the gun against your father’s head and pulled the trigger, where was your mother?” Bozanich asked.
“She was sort of sneaking around the side of the coffee table,” he said.
“You said your mother was sneaking,” Bozanich said. “Did you think she was going to do something sneaky to you?”
“No. I thought we were in danger still,” he said, adding that something about the sight “caused me to freak out and run out of the room,” to the car, where he grabbed one more shell and loaded it in the shotgun.
“When I went outside to reload,” he said, “I was confused and afraid and I wasn’t thinking even these were my parents. I was thinking, ‘Danger!’ And going through the motions.”
He said he ran back to a room “filled with smoke. You could not see well at all. I could barely see that area that freaked me out and I ran over to it.”
“And then you pulled the trigger?” Bozanich asked.
Lyle Menendez sighed deeply. “Yes,” he said.
Later, Bozanich said,
“Your mother wasn’t sneaking. She was trying to get away from being shot to death?”
“I don’t know,” Lyle Menendez said. “I really don’t.”
Autopsy reports indicate that Kitty Menendez was shot 10 times. One of the fatal wounds was a contact wound to the left cheek, meaning she was hit with the gun muzzle against her skin.
Lyle Menendez said he had no memory of the gun muzzle on her face.
9/24/1993--
Saying that his mother seemed to be "sneaking" away, crawling around a coffee table after being shot several times, Lyle Menendez testified Thursday that he reloaded his shotgun and shot her once more.
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