CROSS-EXAMINATION OF ERIK MENENDEZ ENDS.

Byline: Anne Burke Daily News Staff Writer

Wrapping up their eight-day cross-examination of Erik Menendez, prosecutors suggested Monday the brothers were more interested in spending lavishly on themselves than properly mourning for their slain parents.

"Mr. Menendez, when you were spending money following the death of your parents, the killing of your parents, did you purchase them a headstone?" Prosecutor David P. Conn asked.

"I was not involved in that process," Erik, 25, answered solemnly.

Jose and Kitty Menendez's Princeton, N.J., graves were without headstones until after the March 1990 arrests of Erik and brother, Lyle, in their parents' shotgun slayings.

Prosecution witnesses testified earlier that after the Aug. 20, 1989, slayings, the brothers spent thousands of dollars on jewelry, clothing, cars, resort holidays and gambling.

The siblings have pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the shotgun slayings of Jose Menendez, 45, a wealthy entertainment executive, and his wife, Kitty, 47, in the family's Beverly Hills mansion.

Conn's gravestone question ended a long and hostile cross-examination, during which the prosecutor smiled, smirked and ridiculed Erik as he sought to convince jurors that the brothers' defense is preposterous and unbelievable.

"David Conn did everything but spit in his eye and gut shoot him," Barry Levin, Erik's lawyer, said outside of court.

"None of it worked," Levin continued. "(Erik) was absolutely credible. . . . He was the best witness I've ever had."

Erik's cross-examination was just two days short of his entire turn on the witness stand at his first trial in 1993. The grilling isn't over; he still faces another bout with Conn after his re-direct examination.

Conn countered that his cross-examination highlighted glaring inconsistencies between Erik's version of life in the Menendez family, and the reality as borne out by the evidence.

"There is no basis to believe the defendant was ever molested by his father or that he killed in fear," Conn said outside of court.

During his cross-examination, Conn focused a more aggressive attack on Erik's abuse claims than did Lester Kuriyama, the co-prosecutor who grilled the younger brother at the first Menendez trial.

Erik chronicled a litany of childhood horrors during eight days under direct examination. He said his father - who he described as a seemingly invincible, larger-than-life figure - tortured and sexually assaulted him beginning at age 6.

His mother, who he called his father's "enforcer," was drunken and unloving, he said.

Lyle also claims that he was abused, but he might not take the witness stand at the retrial because of potentially incriminating statements he has made since the first trial.

The brothers, who hope to win lesser manslaughter convictions, claim they killed their parents in self-defense. They maintain they were so psychologically disturbed by the abuse that they feared their parents were on the verge of shooting them.

The prosecution claims the brothers killed to gain financial independence from their parents, once said to be worth $14 million.