By: Juliana Elisabet McDaniel
August 20, 1989 a 911 telephone operator answered a call, and heard a 21 year old man say “Someone killed my parents.”(Levenson). The responding officers rushed to the exclusive Beverly Hills house and saw 18 year old Erik Menendez sobbing on the lawn. Proceeding inside, the authorities found José and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez nearly unidentifiable with 15 rounds from 12 gauge shotguns (Zakarin).
Erik and Lyle Menendez told the police they were going to the movies, but had to stop at their parents house to retrieve Erik’s ID. They entered the house, saw the crime scene and immediately called the police. While the investigation focused on José’s business competitors, the brothers acted like they won the lottery spending an estimated amount of $700,000 of their father’s money, however as much as the Menendez brothers seemed to spend they never seemed to mourn. After the murder, Erik’s court mandated therapist ( a consequence from Erik’s previous involvement in a string of burglaries) reached out to him, and their sessions resumed. After only a little time Erik confessed to the murder, and the therapist was able to get both brothers on camera to confess (Zakarin).
It took some time for the recordings to get submitted to the police, but when the tapes were submitted it took authorities over two years to determine if the confessions fell under doctor-patient privilege or were admissible as evidence in court. In the end, two of the three tapes were able to be used in court, and court began in 1993. The trial was recorded and aired on TV, and quickly intrigued the nation with a murderous scandal of a rich wealthy family. “[The Menendez trials] probably had the effect, maybe good, maybe bad, of demonstrating that, even if you didn’t have a celebrity, if the circumstances were dramatic enough, people will be captivated,” Steve Brill, the founder of Court TV, told Rolling Stone in 2017. “We’ve had lots of trials like that since, but that was really the one that proved that people would be interested in watching big trials.” (Zakarin). In the court prosecutors argued that the Menendez brothers killed for their father’s inheritance, while Erik and Lyle claimed they killed in self defense. The defense also attacked Mary as a woman who struggled with addiction, and alcoholism ; the broken wife and useless mother, they said, was devastated by José’s many affairs (Zakarin).
What seemed to be a picture perfect family in the public’s view, crumbled on the nation’s television. Erik and Lyle said their father hadn’t just had high expectations and emotionally abused them. José, they alleged, had molested them for years—Lyle from the ages of 6 to 8, and Erik from 6 to 18. This claim was full of graphic descriptions that shocked the nation and split friends and family members (Zakarin). The brothers claimed that they grew up in a violent and traumatizing home. It seemed impossible to believe that Lyle, a star tennis player with a promising career in business (like his father), and Erik a nationally ranked tennis player had such a horrible home life. Everyone knew José liked to be hard on his children, however no one seemed to know the trauma Erik and Lyle went through. The Menendez brother’s former swim team coach told The Los Angeles Times in 1990 “It seemed like José was so competitive, he was doing everything he could to try to make [Erik] better, but he was so completely overbearing, it had the opposite effect. Erik had so much less self-confidence because everything he did was never good enough.” (Zakarin).
The trial ended after six months with the jury split, declaring a retrial. The second trial began in 1995, however it wasn’t aired due to the judge’s rule. The judge ruled that there was insufficient evidence of José being an abusive father, which was the center of the defense’s argument. Years later, one of Erik and Lyle’s cousins told ABC News that she believed Lyle was telling the truth about the sexual abuse due to him telling her similar things when he was a child. Even more recently, singer Roy Rosselló of the boy band Menudo has also accused José Menendez of sexual assault. (Zakarin). March 21st, 1996 Lyle and Erik were convicted of two counts of first-degree murder. That July, the brothers were sentenced to life without parole, each receiving two consecutive life terms.
In 2018, a letter was found from Erik to his cousin about his father’s abuse stating that “it’s getting worse”. The Los Angeles County judge overseeing the matter ruled in November 2024 that they should have more time to review the case and pushed back a December 11 hearing to the end of January 2025 (Stelloh). This ongoing case still intrigues people with its unusual details that still puzzle people. Whatever happened in the Beverly Hills house on August 20th 1989, only the Menendez brothers would know, and with the trial coming up soon in the future we are bound to find out.
Bibliography
Levenson, Eric. “A Timeline of the Menendez Brothers’ Murder Case and the Push to Reexamine It.” CNN, 6 Oct. 2024, edition.cnn.com/2024/10/06/us/menendez-brothers-timeline/index.html.
Stelloh, Tim. “Menendez Brothers Timeline: The Murders, Trials and Effort to Free Them from Prison.” NBC News, 8 Nov. 2024, www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/menendez-brothers-timeline-trials-murders-free-prison-effort-rcna179362.
Zakarin, Jordan. “Why the Menendez Brothers Killed Their Parents – a Look inside Their Murder Case.” Biography, 24 Oct. 2024, www.biography.com/crime/menendez-brothers-murder-case-facts.