Reporter Ordered to Hand Over Tapes Linked to Menendez Case

Looking to see if old interviews will unearth new clues in the Menendez murder case, prosecutors have taken the unusual step of ordering a free-lance writer to bring various audiotapes to a court hearing Monday.

Robert Rand, who is writing a book on the case, was served this week with a subpoena directing him to produce any interviews he taped with Lyle or Erik Menendez, the Beverly Hills brothers charged with murder in the Aug. 20, 1989, shotgun slayings of their wealthy parents.

The subpoena also orders Rand to turn over interviews he taped with Donovan Goodreau, a friend of the brothers who testified at their first trial.

Rand said he has only one taped interview with either of the brothers. It was with Erik Menendez in 1989. He said he has two taped interviews with Goodreau, from 1990 and 1992. All three tapes, Rand said, were made while he was working on magazine articles or his book on the case.

It is uncommon for prosecutors to go to court to seek a journalist’s source material. “He says he has evidence relevant to this case,” Deputy Dist. Atty. David P. Conn, lead prosecutor in the Menendez case, said Thursday of Rand. “We want him to identify the exact nature of the evidence.”

Rand’s attorney, Anthony Glassman, said the writer would claim the protection of the California shield law, which gives a journalist the right to keep material from authorities.

The subpoena adds one more item to a laundry list of issues Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Stanley M. Weisberg is due to decide Monday.

The judge had been scheduled to fix the date for the Menendez brothers’ retrial, to rule whether the brothers would be tried together or apart, to pick between one jury or two if they are tried together and, finally, to decide whether the retrial will be held in Van Nuys or another county courthouse.

Lyle and Erik Menendez remain in County Jail held without bail. Their first trial ended in January when separate juries deadlocked trying to decide between murder and manslaughter charges.