IN 1989, the brutal murders of Jose and Kitty Menendez in their Beverly Hills mansion shocked the world.
But behind the headlines and harrowing details of the crime lay a horrific tale of family dysfunction and unspeakable abuse.
They family looked perfect from the outside[/caption]
The case became a media sensation and captured the world’s attention[/caption]
The brothers, who are serving life sentences, now have a glimmer of hope after the discovery of new evidence[/caption]
In the months following the homicide, Lyle and Erik Menendez, the brothers who became infamous for committing the murders, alleged their father had subjected them to years of sexual and psychological abuse that left them fearing for their lives.
In their trial, they were accused of slaughtering their parents – a successful music mogul and a former beauty queen – for their £10m fortune, but they claim the crime was a desperate attempt to flee the clutches of their father.
Now, 35 years after the murders, the pair describe their actions in The Menendez Brothers, a powerful new Netflix documentary, and make fresh claims they genuinely believed their parents were plotting to kill them.
“We looked like the perfect family but behind those walls something very wrong was happening,” says Erik.
“Two kids don’t commit this crime for money. They’re already going to get this money. They’re the sole inheritors.
“They don’t commit this crime for anything other than something very, very wrong was happening in the family.”
They also answer many burning questions that have riddled the case for years – including why they didn’t leave home to escape their father’s alleged abuse.
Now in prison, serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole, they have been given renewed hope after authorities confirmed that they will have a new hearing in November.
This comes after new evidence allegedly verified that they had indeed been sexually abused by their father.
Here, we delve into the brothers‘ quest for freedom more than thirty years after the crime.
Shocking murders
On August 20, 1989, Lyle was 21 while Erik was 18 when they shot and killed their parents, Jose and Menendez, after a huge row.
In the documentary, the brothers detail the series of events that led to them killing Jose and Kitty which started when Erik confided in older brother Lyle that their father had been molesting him.
Jose and Kitty Menendez were brutally shot and killed by their sons Lyle and Erik[/caption]
The brothers told cops they believed the murders were as a result of a mafia hit[/caption]
Having gone through years of sexual abuse at the hands of Jose himself, Lyle was enraged about what Erik was going through.
That night, he angrily confronted their father about the vile allegations and plucked the courage to tell him he was a “f***ing sick person”.
But Jose, known for his tough parenting style, brushed him off and warned him that he would raise Erik however he saw fit. He also allegedly said that nobody had the right to tell him otherwise.
A distraught Lyle then confronted their mother, Kitty, who admitted that she knew all about the alleged abuse the brothers had endured at the hands of Jose.
In the documentary, Lyle, 56, says: “I think part of this disastrous weekend occurred from me just being naive that somehow I could rescue Erik without any consequences.
“That I could confront my father, that my mother would react for the first time in her life, like a mother. Those were very unrealistic.”
Erik, 53, adds: “After Lyle had the confrontation with my mum, Lyle and I were alone. His demeanour changed. Now, it was clear to me that he was scared. Lyle at this point believed that our parents could kill us.”
Resolute in his belief that their lives were in danger, Lyle told his brother that they couldn’t “sit around and wait to die”.
Shortly after, they travelled to San Diego to purchase guns so they could defend themselves in case they were ever attacked.
On the fateful night of the murders, Lyle went into their home to inform Kitty that they were leaving. However, Jose determined not to release Erik from his clutches, started arguing with the brothers.
The boys say they were abused by their dad[/caption]
The brothers say they killed their parents after Erik revealed he was being abused by Jose[/caption]
They shot and killed their parents, Jose and Kitty, after a huge row at their Beverly Hills home[/caption]
When he ordered Erik to go into his room, he felt he had no choice but to obey. He explains: “When my dad gave me a direct order I couldn’t mentally resist that order.”
Convinced their parents were going to kill them that night, Lyle went into Erik’s room to warn him. “All I had in my head was if my mum and dad exit that room before I get there I’m going to die”, Erik says.
Desperate to stay alive, the brothers say they loaded the guns they purchased, burst into the family’s den and began firing rounds of bullets into Jose.
Lyle then “ran around” after their mother and gunned her down, too. Erik says he was horrified after seeing the carnage. “I saw them shot and it was the most horrible horrific sight I could ever imagine”, he says.
After the killings, they went to the cinema to get tickets and disposed of the murder weapons.
They then went back to the house and hysterically called the police to inform them that their parents had been killed. They later told police that they believed it was a mafia hit.
Suspicious behaviour
After the murders, the brothers went on a shopping spree and spent $700,000[/caption]
They were arrested after cops found where they bought the murder weapons[/caption]
In the days following the murders, the brothers, although the brothers tried to go about their normal activities, the burden of what they did weighed heavily on them.
Lyle explains: ” I didn’t really have normal coping mechanisms from childhood. I was comfortable with keeping secrets but this was different than that. We were just in like a fog of emotion.”
Their actions also haunted Erik. He recalls: “I remember the relatives coming to town – my uncles and aunties the next day and the day after and the day after.
“And seeing their heartbreak and seeing them cry and this compounding tragedy that just rippled out into every member of my family and my family’s friends. And it was as if everything had just turned to ash.”
In a bizarre attempt to cope with what had happened, Lyle found a chilling way to deal with it all. He says: “Erik would be crying, and we would comfort each other, and I spent a lot of time at my parents’ gravesite. I felt like a ghost.”
The thought of their family finding out what had really happened also terrified the brothers.
Erik says: “I could not imagine telling my family that I had done this. Telling my grandmother. And I certainly wasn’t going to be explaining why.”
For Lyle, keeping the family legacy intact was one of his biggest goals. He explains: “I didn’t want to destroy my father’s reputation after we were responsible for his death. I was very fearful that this was going to spiral out of control.”
The pair embarked on a huge shopping spree, buying expensive designer clothes, Rolex watches and cars worth thousands of dollars.
Erik decided not to go to college and instead hired a $50,000-a-year tennis coach to help him go pro. He also bought a restaurant near the family’s former Princeton, New Jersey home.
In the weeks following their parents’ deaths, the brothers racked up a bill of a staggering $700,000 (£530,000), leading cops to question whether they killed their parents to get their hands on their cash.
But Erik says he was in turmoil during those times and even had suicidal thoughts. “The idea that I was having a good time is absurd”, he explains.
“Everything was to cover up this horrible pain of not wanting to be alive. One of the things that kept me from killing myself was that I felt like I would be a complete failure to my dad at that point.”
Lyle also disputes claims that he was living a fantasy lifestyle. He says: “I was not enjoying myself as a playboy. I was actually sobbing a lot at night, sleeping poorly, very distraught at times and kind of adrift thought all those months.”
Two kids don’t commit this crime for money. They don’t commit this crime for anything other than something very, very wrong was happening in the family.”
Erik Menendez
Robert Rand, who has covered the brothers’ story since the murders occurred, believes they were just living the life they were accustomed to.
In an interview with The Sun, he said: ““Erik and Lyle Menendez Menendez were from a very wealthy family, very upper class family, that had lived in Princeton jersey for 20 years.
“They’d only been in Beverly Hills for a little over a year. And so the family was just spending money very freely. So the reality is that they were just continuing the lifestyle that they had always lived.”
A closer look into the brothers led cops to San Diego, where they discovered that they had purchased the guns using Lyle’s roommates’ stolen ID card.
Cops dramatically swooped in to arrest Lyle in March 1990, which he believes was a “calculated” act to gain media attention.
He explains: “They could have just called me and told me to come into the police station. It was a staged arrest for a media circus. They had called the media to be ready.
“They arrested me with a SWAT team cornering the car on the road like I was a fugitive drug dealer or something.”
Erik said he ‘idolised’ his dad but he was a monster[/caption]
At the same time, Lyle says he was “relieved” that the jig was finally up.
He says: “The secret of why this happened. The secret that you’re responsible. It’s a huge weight. So, there was a feeling of some relief being arrested. Like so many of the emotions in that time in my life it doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
Erik, who was on an overseas trip also flew back home when he heard that they were now wanted by cops. He says: “From that moment when I got off the plane and the detectives put the handcuffs on me everything changed.
“It was an ending of my life at that point. I was a teenager and I had no idea of what was going to come.”
Cops also obtained tapes of the boys confessing to therapist Dr Jerome Oziel which became a crucial evidence in the prosecution’s case.
While awaiting trial, prison authorities also found a letter Lyle wrote to Erik reflecting on why they killed their parents. Although Lyle had asked him to destroy the letter after reading it, Erik kept it as his brother had never opened up to him about their abuse.
Lyle says: “Ultimately, it became clear after they found that jail letter… they had a confession that we were responsible for my parents’ death.”
Erik adds: “As a result of them finding that letter in the summer of 1990, we now had to confess to everyone and having them have to relive not just my parents’ death but now knowing that we were responsible was heartbreaking and really a tragically painful conversation.
“I just said that I’m sorry. That I’m so so sorry. And I would understand if you no longer loved me or want me in your life.”
Father’s ‘abuse’
In court, the brothers spoke in graphic detail about the alleged abuse they suffered at the hands of their father[/caption]
Erik broke down in court as he took to the stands to recount the alleged abuse[/caption]
The brothers’ trial finally began on July 20, 1993, three years after their arrest. Jill Lansing represented Lyle, while Leslie Abramson served as Erik’s lawyer.
On day 37, Lyle described in graphic detail how his father would sneak into his room at night when he was just a child and force him to perform oral sex.
In a powerful testimony that left the judge, jury, and even the prosecution stunned he told the court his father raped him, leaving him bleeding.
When he told his mum about it, she brushed him off and told him his father was punishing him for disobedience.
In the documentary, Erik recalls how he felt listening to his brother in court. “His whole face was this pale, ashen and he had this grey under his eyes”, he says. “The weight of his testimony of having to really destroy the reputation of the family.”
When lawyers questioned whether Lyle ever molested Erik, he emotionally replied: “Yes. I took him out to the woods, and I played with Erik in the same way. And I’m sorry.”
Speaking about the apology in the film, Erik says: “I remember when he apologised to me on the stand for molesting me. That was a devastating moment for me. He had never said he was sorry to me before.”
When Erik took to the stands in court, he also recalled how his father began sexually abusing him from the age of six. He spoke about how his father would threaten him with a huge knife to his throat whenever he objected to his sexual demands.
He also told the court that Jose would bring out an instrument and ask him to perform sexual activities with it.
Erik also said he threatened to kill him if he ever said anything about the abuse.
Speaking about his brother’s testimony in the documentary, Lyle says: “I was dreading my little brother taking the stand just because I knew I was going to hear things I had not heard.
“And I still felt – despite people telling me I wasn’t responsible, I did feel very responsible for him enduring years of horror.”
Erik also reflected on his father’s parenting style and the “misconceptions” that he and his brother never loved their parents.
I was dreading my little brother taking the stand just because I knew I was going to hear things I had not heard
Lyle Menendez
“He loved us but he believed that love needed to be earned,” he explains. “So to be loved by him, we had to be worthy of that love and often that meant going through pain.”
He adds: “One of the misconceptions is that I didn’t love my father or love my mother. That’s the farthest thing from the truth. I miss my mother tremendously.
“I wish that I could go back and talk to her and give her a hug and tell her that I loved her and I wanted her to love me and be happy with me and be happy that I was her son and feel that joy and that connection. It’s more difficult with my father.
“To me, as a boy, he was more than just a man. He was a modern version of an Ancient Greek god. He was different from any man I had ever met and I simply idolised him. I wanted to be like him, but he was rarely a dad.”
Speaking about why he did not leave home like many people had suggested, he says: “Why I didn’t run away was a central part of the trial, and the district attorney said ‘You had an opportunity to leave’.
“I was groomed to know that I could never get away. The idea had been whipped and trained into my brain. It was programmed into my brain to know I could never escape.
“Remember, my father wasn’t a drunken guy sleeping in the street. He was a superstar – a successful, wealthy, dynamic and powerful personality.
“How he was going to raise his children, he was going to raise his children. And there was no one that was going to interfere with it.”
Timeline of Menendez Brothers murder case
20th August 1989 – Erik and Lyle Menendez claim they returned home from the movies to find their parents Jose and Kitty Menendez shot to death in their Beverly Hills mansion.
8th March 1990 – Lyle is arrested on suspicion of killing his parents, having confessed to his therapist; authorities wait for Erik to return from a tennis tournament in Israel.
11th March 1990 – Erik returns from Israel and surrenders at Los Angeles International Airport.
12th March 1990 – Murder charges are filed against Menendez brothers. District Attorney Ira Reiner says the two killed their parents in hopes of inheriting their multi-million pound fortune.
26th March 1990 – The brothers plead not guilty to murder.
8th December 1992 – The brothers are indicted for murder.
20th July 1993 – Opening statements begin in the trial. The brothers are accused of premeditated murder, while they argue it was self-defence, claiming they were sexually abused by their father.
10th August 1993 – Psychologist Dr. L. Jerome Oziel says the brothers confessed to killing their parents in therapy with him in 1989.
3rd December 1993 – Testimony in the brothers’ trial ends after 101 witnesses across five months.
28th January 1994 – After a record 25 days of deliberations, the jury remained deadlocked over whether it was murder or manslaughter, and Superior Court Judge Stanley declared a mistrial.
11th October 1995 – The brothers are tried in front of a new jury. Erik’s lawyer says the brothers killed in self-defence after years of horrific abuse from their father.
16th February 1996 – Judge Weisberg effectively bars the jury from returning manslaughter verdicts for the slaying of Kitty, but allows the jury to return a manslaughter verdict for Jose’s death. He also rules that jurors won’t be able to consider the brothers’ claim that they killed because they believed their parents were about to kill them.
20th March 1996 – The jury convicts both brothers of first degree murder with special circumstances.
17th April 1996 – Brothers sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole
Trial’s aftermath
The pair’s first trial ended in 1994 when the judge declared a mistrial[/caption]
During the second trial, the judge limited the defence’s evidence, enraging the brothers and their lawyers[/caption]
The trial was never a matter of the innocence of the brothers. They had already confessed to the killings, so the jury had to decide whether they would be convicted of first-degree murder or manslaughter.
For a manslaughter verdict, the defence team had to prove that the brothers were really under the belief that their lives were in danger.
In the film, Erik says: “What the attorneys were arguing was that it was an honest but unreasonable belief that I was going to die. Which I didn’t agree with because I believed that it was an honest and reasonable belief that I was going to die.
“I believed that any person, that if they loved my life, I don’t see how they couldn’t have believed that they were about to die.”
After expert witnesses, teachers, friends, and family were called to testify, the jury failed to reach a decision.
While the women were in favour of manslaughter, the men opted for murder. After discovering they were “hopelessly” deadlocked, a mistrial was declared in January 1994.
In the second trial, which began the following year, judge Stanley M. Weisberg limited the defence’s ability to bring up the abuse allegations and the expert witnesses they could call to the stand, which enraged the brothers and their lawyers.
Erik says: “The judge said well, Erik and Lyle are not women, so the battered women syndrome doesn’t apply. So all of that trauma it’s not relevant and it’s not allowed into the trial.
“Leslie [his lawyer] had a virtual panic attack in the courtroom when she heard this ruling. She was screaming and yelling.
“It’s one thing to be biased, but it’s another thing to allow your bias to affect your judicial decisions in the courtroom. It was a stunning moment.”
The judge said well, Erik and Lyle are not women, so the battered women syndrome doesn’t apply
Erik Menendez
The brothers were found guilty of murder, in 1996, and were each sentenced to two consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.
After the sentencing, the brothers were sent to two different prisons, meaning they had to face the prospect of never seeing each other again.
They fought for decades to be together again. In 2018, they were finally reunited when Lyle was moved from Mule Creek State Prison in Northern California to San Diego’s Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility.
Lyle says: “I feel like it was finally a chance to heal. And it was starting on that day.”
Erik adds: “When suddenly this prayer of being able to see my brother again was answered, the joy of seeing him again and being able to wrap my arms around him and give him a hug was overwhelming. It was just happiness.”
On Thursday, it was announced that the brothers would get a new hearing after new evidence allegedly confirmed that Erik was abused by his father.
Robert Rand, who recently uncovered a letter from Erik to his cousin Andy, told The Sun: “It’s a five page letter. I was going through documents in Andy’s dresser, and it was probably about halfway through the second page.
“He wrote a paragraph where he started complaining about the abuse by his father, and that every night he was afraid that his father would come into his room and he didn’t know what to do about it.
“And I was reading this, and I was shocked to see it because I realised that it was a physical piece of evidence. It wasn’t just somebody saying something, but a real physical piece of evidence.
“And I realized this could have a major impact on the brother’s case and their attempt to reopen the case.”
Robert Rand, seen here with Lyle, uncovered new evidence in the case[/caption]
Robert told The Sun that the brothers were hopeful the case would be reopened[/caption]
