TRUE CRIME: THE MOST FAMOUS CONTROVERTIAL CRIMES OF ALL TIME.

Menendez Brothers

On August 20, 1989, José and Mary “Kitty” Menendez were shot to death in their Beverly Hills home. Nearly seven years, three trials and many thousands of hours of TV coverage later, their sons, Lyle and Erik Menendez, were found guilty of their murders and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In between, the Menendez murders became one of the most famous criminal cases of the late 20th century thanks to its potent mix of family drama, Hollywood connections, dramatic testimony and cable TV’s ability to blanket the airwaves with coverage.

Joseph Lyle Menéndez (born January 10, 1968) and Erik Galen Menéndez (born November 27, 1970) are American brothers who were convicted in 1996 for the murders of their parents, José and Mary ("Kitty") Menéndez.

During the trial, the brothers stated that they committed the murders in fear that their father would kill them after they threatened to expose him for years of sexual, emotional, and physical abuse, while the prosecution argued that they did it to inherit their father's multimillion dollar estate. They were first tried separately, with one jury for each brother. Both juries deadlocked, which resulted in a mistrial. For the second trial, they were tried together by a single jury, which found them guilty, and as a result, they were sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

Lyle and Erik's father, José Enrique Menéndez, was born on May 6, 1944, in Havana, Cuba. At age 16, he moved to the United States, shortly after the beginning of the Cuban Revolution. José attended Southern Illinois University, where he met Mary Louise "Kitty" Andersen (1941–1989). They married in 1963 and moved to New York City, where José earned an accounting degree from Queens College. The couple's first son, Joseph Lyle Menéndez, who goes by his middle name, was born on January 10, 1968.

Kitty quit her teaching job after Lyle was born, and the family moved to New Jersey, where Erik was born on November 27, 1970, in Gloucester Township. In New Jersey, the family lived in Hopewell Township in Mercer County, and both brothers attended Princeton Day School. In 1986, José's career as a corporate executive took the family to Beverly Hills, California. The following year, Erik began attending high school at Beverly Hills High, where he earned average grades and displayed a remarkable talent for tennis, ranking 44th in the United States for 18-and-under players.

On the evening of August 20, 1989, José and Kitty were sleeping on a couch in the den of their house in Beverly Hills when Lyle and Erik entered the den carrying shotguns. José was shot in the back of the head with a Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun. Kitty was awakened by the shots and got up from the couch. She was shot in the leg and fell, and was then shot several times in the arm, chest, and face, leaving her unrecognizable.

When they returned home later that night, Lyle called 9-1-1 and shouted "Someone killed my parents!" When the police arrived, the brothers told them that the murders occurred while they were at a movie theater seeing Batman, and then they attended the annual "Taste of L.A." festival at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. The police did not order the brothers to undergo gunshot residue tests to find out whether they recently used a firearm, since at that time there was no clear evidence that suggested they might be involved.

In the months after the murders, the police connected the brothers' lavish spending to the murders of their parents. Lyle bought a Rolex watch, a Porsche Carrera, a $132,000 townhouse in West Windsor, NJ, and Chuck's Spring Street Cafe, a Buffalo wing restaurant in Princeton, New Jersey, while Erik hired a full-time tennis coach and competed in a series of tournaments in Israel. They eventually left the family mansion unoccupied, as they decided to live in adjoining condos in nearby Marina del Rey. They also drove around Los Angeles in their deceased mother's Mercedes-Benz SL convertible, dined expensively, and went on overseas trips to the Caribbean and London. It is believed that they spent somewhere around $700,000 during the period between the murders and their arrests, but the suspicion of the brothers for their spending was later disputed by family members who stated that there were no changes with their spendings before and after the killings.

During the early stages of the investigation, the police tried to narrow their search to people who had motives to kill José and Kitty. They also investigated potential mob leads, but nothing came of them. As the investigation continued, the police believed that the brothers were most likely the perpetrators, since they had obvious financial motives, and were liberally spending money in the wake of the murders. In an attempt to get a confession from Erik, the police convinced Craig Cignarelli, one of Erik's close friends from high school and a tennis buddy, to wear a wire while having lunch with him at a local beachfront restaurant. When Craig asked Erik if he killed his parents, Erik said "no", but he eventually confessed to doing so to his psychologist Jerome Oziel. Oziel then told his mistress, Judalon Smyth, about the murders. She later broke up with Oziel and told the police about the brothers' involvement. Lyle was arrested on March 8, 1990, and Erik turned himself in three days later after returning to Los Angeles from Israel. Both were held without bail and separated from each other

In August 1990, Judge James Albrecht ruled that tapes of the conversations between Erik and Oziel were admissible evidence since Oziel stated that Lyle allegedly threatened him and violated doctor–patient privilege. Albrecht's ruling was appealed, and the proceedings were then delayed for two years. The Supreme Court of California ruled in August 1992 that most of these tapes were admissible, accepting the tape in which Erik discussed the murders. After that decision, a Los Angeles County grand jury issued indictments in December 1992, charging the brothers with the murders of their parents.

The case became a national sensation when Court TV broadcast the trial in 1993. Their defense lawyer, Leslie Abramson, became known defending the brothers, particularly Erik. Lyle and Erik stated that they were driven to murder by a lifetime of abuse at the hands of their parents, especially sexual abuse at the hands of their father, who was described as a cruel perfectionist and pedophile. Meanwhile, their mother was described as an enabling, selfish, mentally unstable alcoholic and drug addict, who encouraged her husband's abuses and was also sometimes violent towards them. The allegations against the couple were supported by their families, with multiple witnesses testifying. The brothers' cousin, Andy Cano, said that as a child, he was told by Erik about the sexual abuse, which they both described as "penis massages." Diane Vander Molen, another cousin of the brothers, stated that she once told Kitty about José's molestation of Lyle, although Kitty told her that it was false. Physical evidence was also provided by the defense, which included nude and sexual photographs showing Lyle and Erik's genitalia taken by their father when they were children. The prosecution argued, however, that the murders were done for financial gain. Lyle's prosecutor, Pam Bozanich, argued that "men could not be raped because they lack the necessary equipment to be raped." Erik's prosecutor, Lester Kuriyama, suggested that Erik was homosexual, and that the sexual abuse was actually consensual.

A few weeks before the night of the murders, Lyle and Erik said that the sexual abuse started again, leading to several confrontations in the family. They also said that their father threatened to kill them if they did not keep the abuse a secret. Around this time, the brothers found out that their parents were hiding rifles in their bedrooms, which led them to buying their own shotguns for protection. The last confrontation happened inside the house den on August 20, 1989, a few minutes before Kitty and José were killed. The brothers then stated that their father closed the den's door at that time, which was unusual. Paranoid and afraid that they would be killed by their own parents, Lyle and Erik went outside of the house to load their shotguns. Erik stated, "as I went into the room, I just started firing."

The trial ended with two deadlocked juries, and as a result, Los Angeles County District Attorney Gil Garcetti announced immediately that the brothers would be retried. The second trial was somewhat less publicized, in part because Judge Stanley Weisberg did not allow cameras in the courtroom. During the second trial, Weisberg also did not allow much defense testimony about the sexual abuse claims and did not allow the jury to vote on manslaughter charges instead of murder charges.

Both brothers were eventually convicted on two counts of first-degree murder and of conspiracy to commit murder; in the penalty phase of the trial, they were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The jury said that the abuse defense was not a factor in its deliberations, but decided not to impose the death penalty because both brothers had no criminal record or history of violence prior to the murders of their parents. However, unlike the juries in the previous trials, the jury in the penalty phase rejected the defense's theory that the brothers killed their parents out of fear, despite all the evidence and testimony, as it is believed that they committed the murders in order to inherit their father's wealth.

During the penalty phase of the trial, Abramson apparently told a defense witness named William Vicary to edit his own notes, but the district attorney's office decided not to conduct a criminal investigation on Abramson. Both brothers also filed motions for a mistrial, claiming that they suffered irreversible damage in the penalty phase as a result of possible misconduct and ineffective representation by Abramson. On July 2, 1996, Weisberg sentenced the brothers to life in prison without the possibility of parole, and also sentenced them to consecutive sentences for the murders and the charges of conspiracy to commit murder.

As in their pretrial detention, the California Department of Corrections separated the brothers and sent them to different prisons. Since they were considered to be maximum-security inmates, they were segregated from other prisoners.

They remained in separate prisons until February 2018 when Lyle was moved from Mule Creek State Prison in Northern California to the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego County; where they were housed in separate units.

On April 4, 2018, Lyle was moved into the same housing unit as Erik, reuniting them for the first time since they began serving their sentences nearly 22 years earlier. The brothers burst into tears and hugged each other at their first meeting in the housing unit. The unit where they are housed is reserved for inmates who agree to participate in education and rehabilitation programs, without creating disruptions.

STORY CREDIT: WIKIPIDEA & VIDEO’S ON THE TRIAL

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