Children of a wealthy Beverly Hills family, brothers Lyle and Erik Menendez became famous for the brutal murder of their parents José and Mary “Kitty” Menendez on August 20, 1989. The case attracted significant media attention at the time due to the nature shocking accounts of the crime and the trial that followed. At the time of the crime, the boys were 18 and 21, respectively.
But what exactly happened, what led the young men to kill their parents and how were they finally caught?
To begin with, some data about the victims. Cuban-born José had worked as an executive at RCA Records in the early 1980s, helping to hire bands such as Duran Duran and The Eurythmics. The children’s mother was a housewife. The Menendez family lived in Princeton, New Jersey, before moving to a mansion in Beverly Hills just a few years before the murder. A family not only wealthy, but also quite well seen. From the outside. The real situation, however, was well hidden within the walls of the house where the four Menendez lived.
Big ambitions
Probably like any other parent, José had high ambitions for his sons. Erik and Lyle Menendez were guided to tennis, even achieving commendable results. But this with some costs that were not at all to the children’s liking. In the end, according to written biographies, Erik and Lyle had no choice but to succeed, as their father was known for working his children to exhaustion in whatever endeavor they were involved in.
In 1996, in an interview that Erik gave to Barbara Walters, writes deseret.com quoting ABC News, he said of José that he was a father “brutal, torturous, and yet I admired him, because he was so strong and it was what success was all about.” However, the senior had been described by his own children as a person who abused them not only physically, but also mentally.
A tumultuous relationship with parents
So Lyle and Erik would have had a rather tumultuous relationship with their parents, mostly due to allegations of abuse and control exercised by their father. Tensions escalated in the weeks leading up to the murder.
Ordered chronologically, the events that happened before the tragedy begin with the morning of August 20, when both brothers seemed to be carrying out their activities normally, planning for the later hours of that day including going to the movies (they had bought tickets in advance). This was, in fact, their chosen alibi.
Lyle and Erik got a shotgun a few days before. They waited until the evening, when they had dinner with their parents at their Beverly Hills home, after which they provoked a confrontation and, according to both trial reports and police investigations, shot their parents multiple times, after which they called 911 saying they had just returned home to find their parents dead.
“Someone killed my parents,” Lyle yelled at the 911 operator.
They started spending their parents’ money
And the investigation followed. During the initial investigations, both brothers engaged in suspicious behavior. Not only did their emotional reactions seem inconsistent with those expected from someone who had just lost their parents in such a violent way, but immediately after the murder, they began spending their parents’ money, buying Rolex watches, real estate and also invested in business. However, these signs were not solid proof of their guilt.
So the investigation continued, and about six months after the murder, in March 1990, police received a tip from an unlikely source: Judalon Smyth, the girlfriend of a psychologist Lyle and Erik Menendez had spoken with, who told police that the brothers confessed to the crimes during therapy and that there is an audio recording.
A few days later, on March 8, 1990, Lyle Menendez was arrested by Beverly Hills police right outside the family’s villa, two days later, Erik Menendez also turned himself in at Los Angeles International Airport on his return from Israel, where he had participated in a tennis championship. On July 20, 1993, the highly publicized trial of Lyle and Erik Menendez began, and even though they were tried together, their fates were decided by juries differently.
Both brothers testified and described how they say they were abused, CBS writes.
Sexually abused by both parents
“Lyle Menendez stated that he was sexually abused by both parents, with his father beginning to abuse him when he was only 6 years old. While Lyle Menendez mentioned that his father stopped sexually abusing him when he was 8 years old, Erik Menendez stated that it never ended for him and that he eventually came out to his older brother, Lyle, a few days before the murder – at the age of 18”.
Also according to trial testimony, Lyle seriously confronted his parents shortly after his brother’s confessions, believing – as they both said – that “their parents were going to kill them to keep the family secret from coming out.” and because of this he would have decided to shoot his parents.
“After killing their parents, they picked up spent shotgun shells from the floor so that their fingerprints would not be discovered. …There was a lot of thought and deliberation,” said one of the investigators.
Sentenced to life without parole
And even though during the trial several relatives and friends of the family tried to come to the brothers’ defense, testifying that they had indeed been abused by their father, Jose Menendez, there was no other evidence beyond these revelations.
Both brothers were finally arrested in March 1990 after a lengthy investigation. The trial began in 1993 and lasted several months, and in April 1996, both Lyle and Erik were convicted of first-degree murder, receiving instead of death sentences, sentences of life without parole.
Lyle Menendez that he got married in prison
Lyle and Erik Menendez are currently incarcerated in the United States, but they are not in the same prison. Lyle Menendez is in the California Maximum Security Penitentiary known as the California State Prison, San Diego, and Erik Menendez, on the other hand, is in the California Maximum Security Penitentiary known as the California State Prison, Sacramento. They seem to communicate with each other regularly through letters. Furthermore, Lyle Menendez is known to have married Anna Eriksson in 2003, the two having been in a relationship since before Lyle was convicted.
The case of the Menendez brothers also spawned a movie series – Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, which is part of the Netflix true-crime anthology series created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan. The series premiered on September 19, 2024, and all episodes are available to stream exclusively on Netflix. The production cast includes Javier Bardem as José Menendez, Chloë Sevigny as Kitty Menendez, Nicholas Chavez as Lyle Menendez and Cooper Koch as Erik Menendez.
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Source: www.descopera.ro
