Lyle Menendez

The Menendez family estate, once valued at up to $14 million, is virtually depleted, it was disclosed Tuesday at Lyle and Erik Menendez's murder trial. Shrunken by taxes, legal fees and other costs, Jose and Kitty Menendez's estate is worth no more than $800,000--and has debts at least that high, defense lawyer Leslie Abramson said in court. Probate records are sealed and the defense had kept financial figures secret throughout the trial.

Editor's note: David Scott Milton taught writing in the prison where Kenneth Hartman, the author of "Mother California," is incarcerated. In this Sunday's book section, Carolyn Kellogg reviews "Mother California." When I first came into the system, I had no ax to grind over prison reform. I was not an activist, nor was I passionately pro-convict. My house in Tehachapi is on a mountain top overlooking the prison. From Max Yard 4B, the lights on my house were all the life the men could see at night.

Prosecutors on Tuesday displayed a series of graphic autopsy photos for jurors in the murder trial of Lyle and Erik Menendez that appeared to reduce the brothers to tears. The color pictures show that their father, Jose Menendez, was hit six times and their mother, Kitty Menendez, 10 times with shotgun blasts. Jose Menendez suffered a fatal shot to the back of his head, a coroner's deputy testified as prosecutors posted a picture of the wound.

Dominick Dunne, the bestselling novelist and Vanity Fair writer who chronicled the misdeeds of the rich and famous with wicked glee -- most memorably in his highly personal accounts of the trials of Claus von Bulow, the Menendez brothers and O.J. Simpson -- has died. He was 83. Dunne died Wednesday at his home in New York City, Vanity Fair reported on its website. Dunne had recovered from prostate cancer in 2001 but was diagnosed with bladder cancer last year. Although ill, he covered Simpson's recent armed robbery trial in Las Vegas, which resulted in Simpson's conviction -- a verdict Dunne had waited more than a decade for. Covering the last Simpson trial capped an extraordinary career that had bloomed from tragedy.

Erik and Lyle Menendez's Beverly Hills therapist, who heard them confess to killing their parents and then became a key witness in the first of the brothers' two murder trials, was stripped of his psychology license Friday. L. Jerome Oziel, who had been accused by a state panel of breaking confidentiality rules and having sex with female patients, surrendered his license to the state Department of Consumer Affairs' Board of Psychology. In a deal that was agreed to Sept.

The Menendez family dream house, a Calabasas mansion featuring a tennis court, swimming pool and mountain views, was auctioned off Thursday in Probate Court for $1.325 million. Raymond and Vera Stewart, a Woodland Hills couple, bought the house at the proceedings in Beverly Hills Superior Court, submitting the only bid and paying the entire amount by check. The auction marked the sale of the last asset in the Menendez family estate, once valued at $16 million and now down to about $500,000.

Lyle Menendez testified Monday that his mother was "very strange" and frequently violent and that she--like his father--sexually abused him. Until he was 13, his mother would wash his body "everywhere," he said. She also would invite him into bed with her and he would touch her "everywhere," he testified. "I took it to be love," Lyle Menendez said, adding, "She was enjoying it." But he was not enjoying it, he said, so he stopped the activities, which enraged her.

Kitty Menendez, who over the years was needy, pathetic, athletic, disorganized, suspicious and spacey, "all kinds of contradictory things," simply seemed strange three weeks before her sons killed her, a former neighbor testified Monday. Called by the defense as Lyle and Erik Menendez's murder trial resumed after a four-day recess, Alicia Hercz said Kitty Menendez "kept staring" into space when they met Aug. 1, 1989, at the Menendez home in Beverly Hills.

At age 13, Erik Menendez confided that his father was molesting him, a cousin testified Tuesday. With the defense in the Menendez brothers' murder trial seeking to corroborate controversial claims of abuse, cousin Andres (Andy) Cano testified that Erik Menendez told him that his father gave him genital "massages."

A jury Wednesday spared the lives of Lyle and Erik Menendez, who shotgunned their millionaire parents to death in Beverly Hills in 1989 and now will spend the rest of their days in state prison with no hope of parole. As the verdicts were read in the tension-filled Van Nuys courtroom, a wave of relief seemed to sweep over the brothers and their defense attorneys when they realized that the jury had rejected the death penalty. The defense lawyers reacted with grins, tears and hugs.

A federal appeals court Wednesday upheld the convictions of Erik and Lyle Menendez, two brothers who were found guilty of murdering their parents in their Beverly Hills mansion in 1989. The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals left intact a 1998 state appellate court ruling that had upheld their convictions and life-without-parole sentences. The brothers admitted shooting Jose and Kitty Menendez in August 1989. They were convicted of first-degree murder.

Lyle Menendez, who was convicted with his brother for the 1989 shotgun slayings of their parents, got married Thursday at Mule Creek State Prison near Sacramento. Menendez, 35, and the bride, identified as 33-year-old Rebecca Sneed of Sacramento, exchanged vows in a prison-approved ceremony, KXTV-TV in Sacramento reported. About a dozen friends and family members bore witness in a maximum-security visiting area.

The state Commission on Judicial Performance publicly scolded Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Nancy Brown for banning a court administrator from her courtroom, but cleared her of other charges of impropriety--including performing a wedding ceremony for convicted parent killer Lyle Menendez.

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge being investigated for, among other things, keeping an artificial marijuana plant in her courtroom has denied all charges brought against her even as she acknowledged some basic facts. In a written response Monday to the state Commission on Judicial Performance, Judge Nancy Brown said she kept a plastic marijuana plant in her courtroom as a "teaching tool used to show people what a marijuana plant looks like."

A state appeals court has upheld the murder convictions of Lyle and Erik Menendez, the tennis-playing Beverly Hills brothers who shot their parents to death in 1989.

Defense lawyer Leslie Abramson will not be subjected to a criminal investigation for requesting that a psychiatrist delete sections of his notes during the murder trial of Erik and Lyle Menendez, a district attorney's spokeswoman said Monday. "After we reviewed the trial transcripts, we determined that ours is not the office to do an investigation," said Sandi Gibbons. The State Bar of California, however, is conducting its own investigation into the matter.

Lyle Menendez, one of two brothers imprisoned for life last year for murdering their wealthy parents in Beverly Hills, got married in prison more than six months ago, the California Department of Corrections said Friday. A spokesman at the Tehachapi Prison said Menendez and Anna Eriksson were married July 2 by Judge Nancy Brown while he was in the Men's Central Jail in Los Angeles awaiting sentencing. At the time, the L.A.

For almost two weeks, jurors in the retrial of the Menendez brothers have been focusing on the bloody details of parricide, replayed shot by shot and larger than life. It has been grim work. They have heard the chilling, metallic clicks of a 12-gauge Mossberg shotgun similar to the alleged murder weapons; they have seen the blood-encrusted polo shirt Jose Menendez wore when he died. And countless autopsy photos have been projected on a courtroom screen.

THE EX FILES: The California Department of Corrections, official keeper of convicted killer Lyle Menendez, is debunking reports of his pending divorce from his conference-call bride, Anna Eriksson. Because as far as Lyle's jailers are concerned, he wasn't legally married in the first place.