When he warned Jose to leave Erik alone or he’d expose him, their father replied, “‘We all make choices in our life. Erik made his. You made yours,'” Lyle testified. The defendant continued, “I thought we were in danger. I felt he had no choice. He would kill us. He’d get rid of us in some way. Because I was going to ruin him.”
Asked why they didn’t go to the police, Lyle said he didn’t believe they could help him because “my dad is a rich guy with a lot of power.”
On the night of Aug. 20, 1989, Kitty told them they couldn’t go to the movies and Jose told Lyle to wait alone in his room upstairs. Convinced their parents were planning to kill them, they decided to strike first, Lyle testified. They grabbed the shotguns out of their car, headed into the den and started blasting away.
Asked why they didn’t tell all when they were interviewed by police early the next morning, Lyle said, “We had decided before that we wouldn’t.”
