Menendez Book May Benefit D.A. : Murder case: Elder brother accused in slaying of parents boasts of beating Garcetti in first trial. The defense seeks to keep publication out of retrial, scheduled to begin Aug. 16.

Brash, confident, often profane--that’s how Lyle Menendez comes across in a new book, based on tape recordings, that prosecutors want to use and defense lawyers are fighting to keep out of the Menendez brothers’ retrial.

The older of the Beverly Hills brothers charged with murder boasts in the book that he beat Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti once and will do it again. While his first trial is in progress, he acknowledges that he might have to make up testimony about sessions with his psychologist. And he worries--often--about his wardrobe and his image.

“Norma, buy me a yellow sweater,” he tells Norma Novelli, the San Fernando Valley woman who--with his consent--taped his phone calls. “Ever see a violent man wearing a yellow sweater?”

At another point, “Trial Lyle,” as he calls himself, proclaims: “You know, I just come across as this really, really nice kid.”

The 263-page book, “The Private Diary of Lyle Menendez,” does not appear to contain any bombshell that by itself could fundamentally transform the direction of the Menendez brothers’ retrial, due to begin Aug. 16. But it does offer an assortment of nuggets, most of which seem likely to benefit prosecutors.

Both Lyle Menendez, now 27, and Erik Menendez, 24, testified at their first trial--which ended in deadlock--that they confessed to their therapist that they had killed parents Jose and Kitty Menendez on Aug. 20, 1989.

The therapist, L. Jerome Oziel, was the chief prosecution witness. A few days before Oziel took the stand, according to the book, Lyle Menendez speaks of the need “to tell a story” about the circumstances of the brothers’ sessions with the therapist, apparently to minimize the impact of the confessions delivered to the psychologist.

Lyle Menendez adds: “. . . I’m going to have to make something up.”

Noting that the first trial was well along at that point, Lyle Menendez also tells Novelli, “Yeah, this is going to be very difficult to add now.” And: “. . . For people to understand [Oziel], I got to do what I got to do.”

In court last week, prosecutors announced that they intend to play for jurors these statements from Lyle Menendez. In an interview Monday, current chief prosecutor David Conn said, “These statements . . . go directly to Lyle Menendez’s credibility.”

Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Stanley M. Weisberg ruled last week that the tape comments about Oziel are legally admissible at the retrial. But defense lawyers vowed to keep fighting, and another hearing on the issue is set for June 19.

Although much of the book could prove embarrassing or worse for Lyle Menendez, sections may ultimately bolster the defense on the key issue of abuse.

At the first trial, the brothers claimed that when they lashed out, they did so in waves of fear rooted in years of physical, emotional and sexual abuse.

In February, 1993, six months before the trial’s beginning, Lyle Menendez tells Novelli: “I want to show [jurors] how much I believe in what--my past. You know, how much I feel for it. All the pain involved and there is no way the D.A. is going to get me. I mean I’m thoroughly, you know, I’m a product of what happened and I just feel like I want to make sure that they--the jurors--understand that.”

Defense attorneys Monday declined requests for comment.

Novelli, 55, a Studio City businesswoman, befriended Lyle Menendez a couple of months after the brothers were arrested. She used to publish a newsletter, Mind’s Eye, that she mailed to various jails and prisons. He responded to an article and their friendship blossomed.

She began visiting him at the Los Angeles County Jail. Ultimately, she visited him four days a week and served as his personal valet--bringing him shoes, books, magazines and, most importantly, stacks of dimes for his calls.

At some point, they began talking about doing a book together. If he was acquitted, he says, “I could tour the book.”

Novelli began keeping notes of her jail visits. Some of those notes are in the book, as are cards he sent her, a line of which reads, “I’m very family-oriented. . . .”

When Novelli discovered that she could not take notes fast enough during their many phone calls, she asked Menendez for permission to record the calls on tape. He gave his consent, she said last week in court. The Menendez defense disputed that, but the judge ruled that consent was freely given.

Novelli testified last week that she began taping him in 1991.

In the book, though, she offers a different time frame: “Beginning in 1992, I began to keep a diary documenting my visits and phone conversations with Lyle. Then, in the fall of that year, the taping of our conversations began.”

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At some point after the first trial, Novelli realized that the tapes themselves could be turned into a book. She sold them for $12,500 to Dove Books, which last year published Faye Resnick’s “diary” of Nicole Brown Simpson.

Dove’s plan had been to put the book in stores on June 12. But a few dozen copies appeared on shelves over the weekend, primarily at stores in the San Fernando Valley. Michael Viner, the company president, said Monday that he was not sure how those copies got out. The company also plans to sell cassette tapes of the recorded calls.

In court last week, Novelli said that the original plan for a book was to detail “the other side of Lyle,” meaning “his personality, things like that.” Her “unauthorized” book is packed with such tidbits:

Lyle Menendez dispatches Novelli to buy Nike “All Conditions Gear” sandals costing $54, for wear at the jail. Black and purple, orange on the bottom, size 11. He asks her to bring him Architectural Digest magazine and an Audi car brochure.

He sets forth his requirements for a wife: “. . . I’d like a woman to be a good cook, a prostitute in bed, not too independent and waiting for me when I get home.”

He tells her of a letter from Erik Menendez, a note that ends: “Well, I guess this letter is a sort of a catharsis.” Lyle Menendez, who attended Princeton, says to Novelli, “What the ---- does that mean?”

No one in jail uses such big words, he says, launching into a fanciful story about “the Mexican gang member next to you [who] goes, ‘Oh, yo dude. While you’re having a catharsis in here can you turn down the temperature?’ ” He adds: “I don’t see that happening.”

The original book plan, Novelli testified last week, involved lots of such stories about life behind bars. And, indeed, her book is sprinkled with jail tales.

Lyle Menendez tells Novelli about feeding a mouse, which he had named Buffy. He tells her that he had used a cleanser to kill roaches in his cell, “and now it feels really nice and clean in there.”

The bulk of the book, though, is devoted to the personalities and tactics involved in the first trial.

At one point, Lyle Menendez thought the trial would be held in Santa Monica. Prosecutors wanted it Downtown, he says, but “we don’t want that because--too many blacks and you never know and all that stuff.”

In fact, the trial was held in Van Nuys after it was assigned to Weisberg, who is based there. Lyle Menendez says in the book that Weisberg is “biased totally . . . for the D.A.”

He dismisses several prosecution witnesses as liars. One witness is a “trained rat.”

He says of an old girlfriend: “I wish she wasn’t testifying. . . . All I ever did was buy her presents like I did with all of my girlfriends.”

On the other hand, his own lawyers are the “better attorneys and they just speak better.” After opening statements, he exults that his attorneys “kicked butt.”

Jill Lansing, Lyle Menendez’s lead attorney at the first trial, is “the absolute bastion of truth, honesty.” He says he picked her “because I wanted somebody who was motherly, who could give me some love.”

When it is suggested after the first trial that Leslie Abramson, Erik Menendez’s chief defense attorney, might turn Erik Menendez against him at the retrial, Lyle Menendez shows no concern.

“We’re brothers. And I know what happened, and I know, I know who he is, and that could not happen in a million years.”

Nor, he asserts, could a murder conviction.

As a matter of fact, Menendez brags, at the first trial Dist. Atty. Garcetti got “his ass kicked.”

“I mean, if he tries me again, he’s gonna lose,” Menendez says of Garcetti. “I’ll tell you right now, I’m gonna beat his ass worse than I did the first time. . . .”