Oh, no.
It is one of the most sensational criminal cases in the country.
Lyle and Erik Menendez,
the brothers accused of murdering their rich parents in Beverly Hills.
Beverly Hills, one of the most expensive pieces of real estate.
Beverly Hills is vibrant, alive, chic, and sophisticated.
♪ The best things in life are free ♪
Beverly Hills was really the American dream.
People wanted to live in those mansions.
People wanted to have that kind of money.
And in the 1980s, Beverly Hills, as well as the rest of the United States,
was really in the era of "greed is good."
90210 is one of the most exclusive zip codes in the world.
It's the place for the rich and famous.
Everybody knows Beverly Hills.
If you live in Oklahoma, you've heard of Beverly Hills.
This was maybe the safest place in America.
Murders don't happen in Beverly Hills,
and then two boys don't kill their parents in Beverly Hills.
At approximately 11:47 p.m.,
uh, we received a 911 emergency call
of possible shooting victims at this location.
Our officers responded and did, in fact, determine that there had been a shooting.
It's not supposed to happen in Beverly Hills.
A movie executive and his wife were brutally slain
in their million-dollar mansion.
There were no clues and no suspects.
Neighbors say they heard several gunshots and then screams
shortly after ten o'clock Sunday night.
The bodies of Jose Menendez and his wife, Kitty,
were found inside their Elm Drive home.
I got a phone call from my brother, Brian.
And he told me Kitty and Jose had been shot.
I... put the phone down,
and I started running around the house screaming.
I... I couldn't... I couldn't bear it,
and it's still difficult thinking about it.
Now that you know what has happened,
do you have concerns tonight for yourself?
Yes, somewhat. It's a very uneasy feeling living in the neighborhood
where something like this has happened so close to home.
I recall distinctly that when the police went into the den
where the two bodies were,
that Jose Menendez's head had been... the back of his skull had been blown off,
and while they were there, his brains fell out on the floor.
There was brain matter and blood, uh, dripping from the ceiling.
The bodies were, you know, in terrible shape.
Shotguns, you know, do horrible damage to a human body.
But the police were really curious
about what happened to all the shells. There were no shells.
Somebody had picked up all the shells from the shotgun casings.
I've been in this business for over 33 years,
and I've heard of very few murders that were more savage than this one was.
Their college-age sons, 19-year-old Erik and 22-year-old Lyle,
said they found the bodies after a night at the movies.
They found the two brothers out in front of the house.
They were hysterical. They were overacting.
But the police were very nice to them.
They were not treated as suspects by the investigators at the beginning.
Beverly Hills is a different kind of police department.
They have much better customer service for their citizens.
Statistically, if you have a domestic homicide,
you would be an idiot police officer not to consider other family members.
On the other hand, this is Beverly Hills,
and the idea that the sons, at 21 and 18, could have been so responsible
for such incredible acts of violence,
you have a tension here.
Could this really have been possible?
Why? What's the motive?
There's something weird going on here.
I began covering the Menendez case the day after the murders,
and I have written a book about the entire trial.
I met Erik and Lyle Menendez at the Menendez mansion
at 722 North Elm Drive.
And they were wearing tennis whites. They were tan.
They were laughing. They were joking.
I kept feeling, "This is so strange."
"How can they be living here after this terrible crime took place?"
Lyle Menendez did 90% of the talking
the first day that I met with the two brothers,
and he told me, "We did so many things together."
"We loved each other so much. We spent so much time together."
At one point, Lyle Menendez asked me if I would like to work with the brothers
on a book about their father. They thought he was such a great man.
He said that the Menendez family was really like the Kennedys.
That Jose was going to move to Miami and run for the US Senate from Florida.
Lyle said that he and Erik would like to carry out their father's plans.
He's telling me these grandiose plans.
These guys are 18 and 21.
There was a memorial service at the Princeton University chapel.
The most poignant moment was when Lyle read a letter from his father.
It said, "I believe that both you and Erik can make a difference."
"I believe that you will."
"I encourage you not to select the easy road."
"I urge you to walk with honor regardless of the consequences
and to challenge yourself to excellence."
Friends of Jose and Kitty Menendez
were surprised at how cool and calm Lyle was
and how beautifully he eulogized his parents.
Erik and Lyle Menendez were each handling the deaths of their parents
in very different ways.
Lyle Menendez really kind of became like his father overnight.
Suddenly, he went from being a goofy college kid
to wanting to be a business mogul.
Friends say it was a strange, swaggering imitation
of his businessman father.
And for a while, Lyle hired these bodyguards,
saying he feared for his own life
because his father had a lot of business enemies.
Their behavior after the murders was startling.
They went shopping.
Now, I love a good shopping expedition, but this was crazy.
They started spending the money as if it was water,
as if they'd been desperate for that kind of money.
Porsche Carrera, Jeep Wrangler, three Rolexes.
Ching. Ching. Ching. Ching. Ching.
Spending money.
Erik dropped plans to enter UCLA
and hired a $50,000-a-year tennis coach to help him turn pro.
Lyle bought a Porsche, expensive clothes,
and a restaurant near the family's former home in Princeton, New Jersey.
Contrary to the way some people think, the police are not stupid.
And when the brothers started spending money,
the police were like, "Hmm."
"Wonder if that would be a motive?"
The thing is, when you have a homicide inside a house,
98% of the time, it's someone you know, it's a relative.
The suspicion was on the brothers, even though they told the police
they thought it was a Mafia hit.
As they investigated,
they'd come to me and say, "We have this now."
And I'd say, "Great, but there's not enough to file a case yet."
I needed the police to find me the guns,
or find me where they bought the guns, or something major like that.
Finally, the investigators ended up in San Diego.
They found the place where they bought the guns,
using Lyle Menendez's roommate's stolen ID card.
The actual murder weapons have never been found,
but authorities say they believe 12-gauge Mossberg shotguns,
just like this one, were used.
And when that happened, the case was ready to go.
Today at approximately 1:20 p.m.,
Beverly Hills police detectives arrested Joseph Lyle Menendez, 22,
for the August murders of his mother and father,
Maria Louise Kitty Menendez and Jose Enrique Menendez.
Police say the motive was apparently money,
a $14 million inheritance to be shared by the brothers.
Police arrested Lyle at the family mansion yesterday.
Younger brother Erik's reportedly returning from an overseas trip
to surrender.
The day I learned that Lyle and Erik were arrested
was a jaw drop.
For seven months, it was kind of a local LA story.
And in March of 1990,
it became a national and international media phenomenon.
Not many Hollywood murder mysteries ever took a more dramatic turn.
The bizarre twist to a sensational California murder.
They should suffer just like their parents did.
The public couldn't get enough.
Overnight, the Menendez case blew up all over the world.
Oh, come on, they're so adorable.
They are too fine to go to prison. Whoo!
I know they don't exactly have an airtight case, okay?
Lyle went on a little bit of a spending spree a week after the murders.
He got, um, a couple of Rolexes and a $70,000 Porsche. But you know what?
Sometimes you have to treat yourself.
From the prosecutor's point of view, it's a phone-in.
Multiple shotgun blasts. A classic motive, greed and anger.
They wanna get their hands on a $14 million estate.
The story of the brutal murder
has suddenly become the most sought-after property in Hollywood.
Two California brothers have pleaded not guilty
to charges they killed their wealthy parents.
The arrest of Lyle and Erik Menendez for the shotgun slaying of their parents
came as a surprise to family members.
I was at work. I worked for the phone company.
Uh, Jose's secretary had called me
to tell me they were arrested.
And I went around my office screaming and yelling and...
It was unbelievable to me that... that this could be so.
I knew they had made a mistake.
It couldn't be that Lyle and Erik would have done this.
Lyle Menendez initially told all the family members,
you know, this was a big misunderstanding.
He and Erik were innocent.
Most of the Menendez family said there's no possible way
that the brothers were involved in this.
Family members, including Lyle and Erik's grandmother,
believe in the brothers' innocence.
These boys killing father and mother?
No, no, and no.
Is that okay?
Frank, give me another XLR, quick.
Jury selection begins in a murder trial,
and it's not your ordinary case.
Lyle Menendez and brother Erik
are accused of killing their parents.
Down in front.
Come on, I've got a cameraman here who's gonna get a shot.
You practice running backwards?
See?
I was thrilled to pieces to cover this trial.
I knew that this was going to be a career maker.
And I... I drew the lucky straw, I... I suppose.
I was already well aware of the details
of having read everything in newspapers and in magazines.
Even though they preferred that you did not.
When I was called to jury duty, I had no idea what the case would be.
On the first day, there were rumors that it was for the Menendez case.
I didn't think that was possible
because I thought that had happened years earlier.
So when I first saw Erik Menendez walk into the courtroom,
I knew for sure that it was.
I'd never seen a murderer before. As far as I knew, he was a murderer.
This was going to be one of the first televised celebrity trials.
The trial was on a new cable TV channel called Court TV.
We now return to the Menendez brothers on trial.
It was a murder trial as a reality show.
You have every ingredient you could possibly want in a trial.
You've got Beverly Hills.
You've got murder. And then you've got one other ingredient.
It's now on television.
Attorney Leslie Abramson is representing Erik Menendez.
"Why aren't you nervous today?" It's because I know this case so well.
I've lived this case. I've lived their lives for three and a half years.
So there's nothing to be nervous about. I know it.
We wondered what drives this tiny, brash, brainy woman
with the in-your-face style.
This 4-foot-11 Little Orphan Annie lookalike
is 104 pounds of pure dynamite.
Her trademark audacity has helped her save a dozen people from death row.
She's one of the foremost criminal defense lawyers in the nation.
Leslie Abramson was a magnificent attorney.
And you were aware of that from the moment she started.
If I told you what I really thought of Leslie Abramson,
I would be sued.
'Cause she, I think, has lost all her money.
And I'm not giving up my house.
Jill Lansing, a former public defender,
is Lyle Menendez's lawyer.
I remember the first day I met him at the jail.
I said the same thing to him that everybody else always asks me.
"It must be really terrible, given the lifestyle you've had,
to be in jail."
And his answer was,
"In some ways, it's easier than living at home."
I had no reaction to the Menendez brothers.
There was no visceral reaction.
I didn't feel like I was in the presence of pure evil.
They were like potted plants to me.
They were like poisonous potted plants,
but there was nothing about them that I found fascinating.
They were just these dumb jock... killers.
The judge had been the judge on the Rodney King case.
That turned out not the way the judge, I'm sure, would like to have had it.
Tensions exploded overnight on the streets of Los Angeles
following the acquittal of four police officers charged
in the beating of Rodney King.
I look at it like this. You beat a dog, you go to jail.
You beat a Black man, nothing happens.
After the Rodney King case,
people in Los Angeles had a distrust of the court system.
And the authorities were determined to show everyone
that the court system was legitimate and had credibility.
Day one of the trial.
The prosecution and defense are ready to do battle
with their two radically different versions
of the same event.
- Good morning to you all. - Good morning.
This is a case of People v. Lyle Menendez
and People v. Erik Menendez.
What is going to happen today is that you'll be hearing the opening statements.
The day that we did opening statements,
I was coming into the courthouse,
and people were filming me.
And I just thought, "What the hell have I gotten myself into?"
And I went in the bathroom and threw up. The only time I've ever thrown up
during a trial or before a trial or anything.
Having media there was a nightmare.
You don't have that in a normal murder trial.
We'll now proceed with opening statements,
first from the prosecution and then the defense.
Thank you, Your Honor. And good morning.
What I'm going to outline here is an overview
of what the people anticipate the evidence will show.
On September the 8th of 1989,
19 days after the killings,
a life insurance policy, which had been procured earlier
by Jose Menendez,
was paid to the defendants.
The policy, cumulatively, was for $650,000.
We will prove to you that Lyle Menendez planned this murder
and then set off to spend the money,
which he had acquired through the killings of his parents.
This murder was unlawful,
unjustified, and wholly premeditated.
And that but for a few mistakes they made, this was almost the perfect murder.
The only reason I'm doing this after 33 years
is that that poor woman that gave birth to both of them
was treated like a doormat by her husband and her sons,
and she was slaughtered like a wild animal inside of her own home.
Is the defense ready to proceed?
- We are. - All right, Ms. Lansing.
The only thing that you are going to have to focus on in this trial
is why it happened.
And what we will prove to you
is it was done out of fear.
They were afraid of Jose Menendez, and they were afraid of Kitty Menendez.
This trial will take you behind the facade of the rich houses,
the fancy cars, the wealthy friends, and impressive social engagements.
Jose Menendez, he was aggressive, he was talented,
he was a charismatic, powerful man.
Lyle's violent experiences with his father
had been for the most part when he was young.
If you didn't swim well enough, you were held underwater.
When Jose took off his belt, someone was going to get beaten.
You didn't know who, and you didn't know why.
He reveled in his sadism.
In 1986,
Kitty Menendez discovered that her husband had been having an affair
for approximately eight years.
She was leaving suicide notes for her sons.
She was threatening to poison the family.
A crazy woman got even crazier.
And they knew that these were parents
who could kill their children.
Erik Menendez will tell you the entire painful and difficult
and complicated story of his life.
The origin of this killing was a lifetime of abuse
at the hands of those same parents.
Unlike the alleged crime that the prosecution here presents,
those crimes occurred in total secrecy.
No police were called.
No crime scene photographs were taken.
He killed his parents because he could no longer endure their abuse
and had to stop it.
He fired every round in his gun at them.
Because his parents were wealthy,
the prosecution tells you he did it for the money.
What do they say when poor kids kill?
Counsel, now you're arguing again.
I'm done, Your Honor.
Initially,
the Menendezes were seen from the outside
as the perfect family.
Jose was a successful businessman.
Kitty was the caring mother who kept the whole family together.
Lyle was at an Ivy League school,
and not only an Ivy League school, but at Princeton.
Erik was a tennis star.
From the outside,
they had the picture of the classic first-generation-American,
do-everything-make-good wonderful-American success story.
If you only saw the surface story.
Nobody does it better than Hertz.
♪ Hertz, the Superstar ♪
You know it.
There are thousands and thousands of young people outside,
all of them out there for probably one of the hottest singing groups
in the entire world.
Ladies and gentlemen, here they are, Menudo.
♪ Since I felt as strong As I feel for you ♪
♪ I just want you to hold me ♪
♪ Let me show you ♪
♪ How love can make Our dreams come true... ♪
From the outside, this was the perfect all-American family.
And behind the gates of that mansion, it was a different story.
Dr. L. Jerome Oziel.
- Spell your last name. - O-Z-I-E-L.
- All right, Mr. Kuriyama. - Thank you, Your Honor.
So the case broke open because of the wackiest,
weirdest, most unusual turn of circumstances
anyone could ever have imagined.
And if anyone had written this for a script in Hollywood,
the Hollywood people would have gone, "No way."
When Erik was a juvenile, he had been involved in a burglary.
As a result of doing these burglaries,
their then attorney,
he did what all lawyers would do. He sent him to a shrink.
Erik had gone to see a therapist named Dr. Jerome Oziel.
And then after the murders, he had started to see him again.
I and any therapist,
um, carries with him or with her at all times
hundreds or thousands of people's secrets.
And it is... it's a sacred obligation to preserve those secrets.
Mr. Oziel, would you describe what occurred
as Erik Menendez arrived at your office?
Erik came in,
and he was, uh... he was extremely agitated and extremely depressed.
He'd lost a lot of weight.
Uh, he had had some suicidal ideation.
At some point in the session, he asked me to take a walk with him.
Erik told me, uh, things about his father
and... and how his father was a... a great man.
And then we headed back to the office.
And right before we entered,
he leaned back against, as I recall, a... a parking meter
that was in front of the office door and said, um,
"We did it."
Um, I don't know if he said, "We killed our parents."
But I asked him, "You... You mean you killed your parents?"
He said, "Yes."
Erik began describing in pretty elaborate detail
exactly, uh, what happened.
The father had just been completely dominating
and was impossible to please, had perfectionistic standards,
and also that he had been very controlling and very damaging,
um, to their mother and that she also was miserable.
The reason that the mother was included in the plan was basically
they couldn't find a way not to include her in the plan.
The mother would have been a witness, number one.
Number two, they didn't believe that the mother could have survived
emotionally anyway without the father.
And three, they thought the mother was so miserable
that it was, and this is not Erik's words, sort of like a euthanasia.
Oziel goes into this really sick plan.
And he wants to get their confessions on tape.
Could you please describe his demeanor
when he came into the office?
Uh, he was extremely upset,
um, threatened,
threatening, menacing.
And did you tell Lyle and Erik Menendez
why you had taken this precaution?
Yes, I did.
What was your reasoning that you told them?
That there was a strong threat to my life.
He laughed, and he said that I should've felt threatened
because immediately after the session,
he and Erik had sat in Erik's, uh, new Jeep.
And the first statement that Lyle had made to Erik was,
"Now how do we kill Oziel?"
Oziel then told people,
well, he told his girlfriend and his wife what had happened.
She's Judalon Smyth.
Judalon Smyth claims that she and Oziel were lovers
and that he asked her to eavesdrop during a session
in which the Menendez brothers allegedly confessed to their parents' murder.
The girlfriend then goes to the police because she was mad at her boyfriend
because she said he had raped her.
And, oh, by the way,
he is the psychiatrist for the Menendez brothers,
and they confessed they did it and threatened to kill him.
It was an aside.
I tried to give the information that I had that would, you know...
lead them to be able to make an arrest.
Judalon Smyth was originally a patient of Dr. Oziel.
So right there he's got a dual relationship, which is unethical.
Ms. Smyth, your main motivation was that you wanted the police
and the district attorney's office to arrest Dr. Oziel
and to prosecute him, correct?
Yes. He had abducted me from my home.
He had drugged me.
He had... He had forced me to stay in his home against my will.
He had threatened my life.
She said Dr. Oziel became involved with the Menendez brothers
and told her about it.
And then to keep her quiet,
he drugged her and kept her hostage, essentially.
It was like watching a soap opera for a living.
It was comic relief.
It was not to be believed.
Not only in terms of testimony,
but in terms of, "People really act like this?"
While he's waiting to testify,
the AG calls me up and says,
"Well, Dr. Oziel is gonna lose his license."
And I said, "Could you wait a couple weeks before you make him lose his license?"
Anyway, put on Dr. Oziel because I did want to get the tapes at some point.
It ended up in the California Supreme Court
on the issue of these tapes, whether or not the facts were sufficient
to get a waiver of the psychotherapist patient privilege.
We got those tapes at the end of the trial.
We didn't have them until the end of the trial.
On the morning of one of these, um, closed-door hearings,
the LA County Sheriff's Office released a statement
that said Erik and Lyle Menendez had tried to escape that morning.
So the Sheriff's Department went to each brother's cell,
and they were allowed to do a search.
In the course of searching the brothers' cells,
the sheriff's deputies found a 17-page letter
in Erik's cell that Lyle had written to Erik.
And at the end of the letter,
Lyle had written in big letters, "Destroy this after you read it."
I REFUSE TO GIVE UP FOR DADS SAKE.
HE IS WATCHING AND I WILL NOT DISAPOINT HIM
WE DID NOT DO ANYTHING FOR THE MONEY
Two weeks later,
the sheriff's department quietly put out a statement.
"Gee, sorry. Erik and Lyle never tried to escape."
"My bad."
WE ALONE KNOW THE TRUTH
I need to read your handwriting. What is that?
When you got arrested,
I didn't know anybody, and I didn't know who to hire,
and nobody really does, and I just got lucky.
When you approached your first session with Erik Menendez,
was it your expectation that you would try to get information from him
as you usually do?
Yes.
And were you able to do that?
No, I was not.
When Leslie Abramson called me and asked me to help her
because she could not figure out why the crime occurred,
my impression initially was that they were two rich kids
that just knocked off their parents for the money.
But my experience told me there's got to be more to this case.
What I found in interviewing Erik
was that he was so depressed, so distraught,
that I could hardly get any information out of him.
He kept rambling on about his father,
and I tried to get him to stop.
And he wouldn't stop.
He didn't do what I wanted him to do. He just kept crying
and telling me how wonderful his dad was.
And that went on for the first two, three, four hours that I saw him.
I... I couldn't control him.
In my mind, I'm thinking as all the other lawyers and experts are,
"But you killed them!"
"I mean, if they were so wonderful why did you kill them?"
Jill Lansing, who was Lyle Menendez's attorney,
called me, explained that there was a case that might involve child abuse.
And so, in fact, I agreed to conduct an evaluation of Mr. Lyle Menendez.
And then I would also talk to other family members.
I talked to relatives trying to get a sense of Lyle and the family.
Lyle and Erik and I formed a bond.
We were like the Three Musketeers.
It's the only time they ever had fun was when we were all by ourselves.
One time Jose put Lyle on a kitchen counter
and prompted Lyle to jump off, and he was going to catch him.
As Lyle did so, Jose backed off
and let him fall to the ground,
telling him that you can never trust anybody.
We were having a family gathering,
and Jose stood up, uh,
grab him and just looked at him.
He looked very scared.
And what happened after that?
Jose hit Lyle with his closed fist.
- Did he seem to hit him hard? - Yes, he did.
Lyle would've been about five years old?
Yes. Yes.
I couldn't find anyone to say anything nice
about Jose Menendez except for his secretary.
And everybody else had just these awful stories about him
and what a monster he was.
The loss of Jose Menendez in my mind was an actual plus for mankind.
Jose Menendez was a really awful man, okay?
And he raised two sons capable of murder, so there you go.
Lyle idealized his dad. Thought his dad was a powerful person.
And so Lyle described a situation where he was a favorite child.
In some ways trying to be a little Dad, a little Jose,
but not being as competent or skillful as Dad, but trying.
I think that the older brother was much more like the father.
More aggressive,
dominating,
kind of manipulative.
The younger brother was much more like the mother.
More emotional, could become hysterical at times.
So that was a contrast in their personalities.
Did you ever see your brother, um...
have Erik hold on to a... a bar and lift him with it?
Yes, I did see that. He would just pull it up and hold him up
and see how much he could stand without crying
and say, "I tell you to stop crying. Why can't you stop crying?"
And he kept on yelling at the kid, and of course, Erik would cry more.
- Now this is when Erik is two? - Yeah.
And did you see this on more than one occasion during that week?
Yes, I saw it twice on that week.
Now describe what you saw with respect to Lyle.
He was very proud of Lyle
whenever Lyle was doing something competitive
against any one of the other cousins,
and he loved the fact that Lyle didn't cry,
even if they were hitting him.
Jose used to induce that type of competitiveness,
fighting type of relationship, which I personally disliked.
Ann Burgess is a professor of psychiatric nursing
at the University of Pennsylvania.
What's the profile, Ms. Burgess?
Is there a profile of the... of the violent family member?
There's no really general profile. There are some common threads.
In the family, very often, they themselves may have been abused.
I... I spent most of my time interviewing Erik.
Loved his parents.
Uh, regretted... He said, "Ten seconds after this, I regretted what we did."
Uh...
One of the techniques that I use, certainly with children,
but also with persons that have committed a crime,
is I ask them to draw it.
It's a non-leading way
of getting some information.
That's what I did with Erik. I said, "Let's start with that week before."
He did about 12 or 14 frames.
It was a mini Rorschach, I guess you could say,
to... to have him draw it out.
And I think it was helpful for him to be able to put it on paper.
Because he hadn't really talked about this.
I did talk to Leslie Abramson, of course,
and I had said there has to be something going on in the family
for this to have happened.
That this is not something that, you know, they need money
or... or any other motive, or revenge,
or all of the other motives that we could think of.
I said, "Something is very wrong in the family."
Over a period of week after week after week after week,
month after month after month,
slowly... bits and pieces about the perfect family
began to disintegrate.
So far, 25-year-old Lyle and 22-year-old Erik
have sat quietly in court,
knowing they could be sentenced to death if convicted.
Both brothers are expected to testify in the case.
They'll give their version
of why they admittedly fired 15 shotgun blasts into their parents
here at the family's Beverly Hills mansion.
Defense attorneys say Lyle could begin telling that much-awaited story
by the end of the week.
Joseph Lyle Menendez.
M-E-N-E-N-D-E-Z.
Once you moved to Monsey,
did sports become an important part of your life?
Well, they were everything to my dad,
and that was my whole life
at that time.
And was doing what your father wanted of you important?
That's what made him happy, and that's what I wanted to do.
Why'd you want to make him happy?
So he would love me.
And between the ages of six and eight,
did your father have sexual contact with you?
Yes.
And how did it start?
We would have these talks, and he would show me.
And he would, uh, fondle me,
and he would ask me to do the same with him.
And I would... I would touch him, and we would undress.
Um, it would... He would put me on my knees, and...
he would guide me, all my movements.
And I would, um...
uh, have oral sex with him.
At some point, did he do some other things to you?
Yes.
Uh... He raped me.
Did you cry?
Yes.
Did you bleed?
Yes.
Were you scared?
Very.
Did you tell your mom?
I told her that he keeps touching me.
What did your mom say?
She told me to stop it
and that I was exaggerating.
And that my dad has to punish me when I do things wrong.
And she... she told me that he loved me.
So during the time between six and eight when this was going on,
did you do something to your brother?
Yes.
What did you do to your brother?
I took him out to the woods,
and I played with Erik... in the same way.
And I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
The first day of Lyle's testimony,
there were many audience members and jurors with tears in their eyes
because it was so... emotional.
I mean, I thought either he is the best actor I've ever seen in my life
or he's telling the absolute truth.
You could hear a pin drop.
It was very compelling.
It was very novel.
Okay, I'll tell you exactly what I thought. "Oh shit."
You know, that sums it all up.
'Cause it was pretty good.
People have to be held accountable for what they do
regardless of how they're feeling
because there are a lot of abused people who don't commit crimes.
The judge has cautioned the brothers' lawyers
that a history of abuse does not make a legal defense for murder.
So the attorneys hope the testimony of Lyle and later Erik
will convince jury members the brothers truly feared for their lives,
killing their parents in self-defense.
Erik Galen Menendez. M-E-N-E-N-D-E-Z.
Are you aware of the idiosyncrasies of that microphone?
If you get too close, it pops. You know that?
Yes.
If you get too far away, we don't hear you.
- That's right. - Okay.
Mr. Menendez, where do you live?
Los Angeles County Jail.
And how long have you lived there?
Three and a half years.
Mr. Menendez, during the summer of 1989,
were you being sexually molested by your father?
Yes.
And when did that begin? How old were you?
I was six years old.
From the time you were six when you say
your father started to molest you,
how long did that go on?
Twelve years.
And can you tell us, what do you believe
was the originating cause
of you and your brother shooting your parents?
Me telling Lyle that, uh...
You telling Lyle what?
Was it you telling Lyle about something that was happening?
My dad...
Okay.
My dad...
That my dad had been molesting me.
This would be a good place.
All right. We'll take our recess until tomorrow at nine o'clock.
- Good morning. - Good morning.
We're ready to resume with the testimony.
You may resume your direct examination.
Thank you, Your Honor.
Now at this time in your life, Mr. Menendez, when you lived in Monsey,
um, and you were about six years old?
Yes.
How would you describe your relationship with your father?
Um...
He, uh...
He used to, um,
come into my room, and he had me take off my underwear.
He would massage my genitals.
- How did he treat you? - Um, he was... he was kind.
Uh, he never said anything negative to me.
Uh, he told me that I was part of the family and that...
that I belonged and that this was... this was something between us,
and what he said is that this would stop if I told anyone.
Um, and did you want it to stop?
- No. - Why?
Because it was the only time I got to, uh, spend alone with my dad.
It was the only time I got to be with him and...
and for him to be nice and caring with me.
Mr. Menendez, can you look to your right to the pictures of yourself
that are on that board?
Uh-huh.
How old were you in those pictures?
I think I was ten or eleven.
So at the time those photographs of you were taken,
you had already been raped by your father, had you not?
Yes.
Did you ever say no?
Yes.
How did he react to your saying no?
He stormed out of that room.
So what happened next?
He came back with a knife.
Now, this knife, Mr. Menendez, is a...
- I think it's like that. - Yeah?
- If not bigger. I remember it being huge. - Okay.
And when he came back with the knife,
what did he do with it, if anything?
He put it on my neck.
He put his hand on my head and put the knife on my neck.
Did he threaten you with it?
- Yes. - What did he say?
He said, "I should kill you, and next time I will."
- And did you believe him? - Yes.
He started using, uh, different tools.
What do you mean by tools?
He had this wooden, uh...
It was about this long, and it had a little knob at the end,
and it was roundish, and, uh...
Uh, he would tell me to use that on myself.
What part of your body were you supposed to use this thing on?
My, uh...
My butt.
He told me he wanted me to,
um, massage his penis with my mouth.
I had to give him a massage on my knees until he started to, uh...
have an orgasm.
And had he ever done that before
while you were giving him a mouth massage?
No. Um...
So I was about to pull away 'cause I didn't know what was gonna happen
because we weren't on a bed and I was just kneeling down.
And he said, "No. Swallow." And he held my head to him.
He would say, "What's gonna happen to you if you tell anyone?"
And I remember the first time I said, "That you will hurt me."
And, uh, he said, "Wrong."
And so I hit myself.
And he said, "What's gonna happen if you tell someone?"
And I said, "You'll kill me." And he said, "Right."
The myths back then about who a sex offender was
didn't fit the Menendez family.
And a powerful, highly successful executive
was not looked upon as the kind of person who would sexually abuse their children.
But looking at these attractive, well-dressed white guys
just doesn't match the public's perception of what a victim should look like.
And there's a natural tendency to discount it.
It just doesn't fit with how we think of privileged people.
The defense made a good argument.
It made me start questioning what I had already started to believe.
When you have a doubt, that's where the law comes in
and says you need to give them that benefit of the doubt.
How do you know they were sexually abused?
Have you ever? I want to know.
I just want to know, okay?
Do you know what fear is like?
How do you know what went on?
Hold on a second.
The defense used psychological manipulation of the jurors
by putting nice-looking, wealthy young men in sweaters
crying on the stand.
The sweater defense is so pathetic to me.
It didn't work for Dan Rather when he was trying to soften his image.
Why didn't the Menendez brothers leave?
They'd grown up. They should've left if they were being abused.
But I've been watching a lot of Court TV.
Riveted... Riveted to the Menendez brothers trial.
I don't get a chance to watch much TV.
Oh, these two arrogant brothers are gonna fry.
I don't buy it. Please.
Did you feel sympathy for the Menendez brothers?
Um...
Not particularly, no.
They've made a Menendez sitcom.
It will premiere in just a few weeks.
They've asked me to run the opening for you now.
Well, here it is. Take a look.
I called Jay Leno's show one time
to protest them making fun of them.
And that's all they did. They just made fun of them.
I was told we were public property now, and they could do what they wanted.
I called The Tonight Show and said, "Can you please stop?"
That didn't go anywhere, but...
The defense used witness after witness
to try and portray Jose and Kitty Menendez
as cruel, abusive, and demanding parents.
A cousin testified that in 1976,
eight-year-old Lyle told her of molestation.
What happened?
Lyle and Erik and I had been downstairs,
and the boys had been called up to get ready for bed.
I stayed and went into my bedroom.
And a while later, Lyle came down.
I thought he was there to say good night.
And what happened next?
He proceeded to...
indicate to me by touching himself, uh, down...
and... and saying that his dad and him had been touching each other down there.
He was afraid that his dad was going to do so that night.
Do the very same thing that night.
And what happened after that?
I went and got Kitty
and, uh, brought her downstairs and told her what was going on.
What happened when Kitty came down?
Uh... She didn't believe me.
I followed her downstairs, and she took Lyle by the arm
and took him right back upstairs. Never said a word to me.
Nothing was ever discussed afterwards.
I just fe... felt like, well, nobody else is doing anything.
I must have been wrong.
Then Lyle and Erik killing their parents
made me wonder again.
You know, maybe I wasn't wrong then.
Everything in the family was coming to a head.
The younger brother was so at the end of his rope
that he was thinking about killing himself 'cause he didn't want
to endure the rapes of his father anymore,
and he had hope that if he went to Stanford,
that maybe he would have some distance between the father.
But the father told him,
"You're not going to Stanford, you're going to UCLA,
and you're gonna be living here."
I could tell something was wrong.
You know, he was basically shaking, and I asked him what was the matter.
And, uh, at some point, you know, he couldn't tell me,
and he just started crying.
And I said, "You can tell me, what is it?"
And, uh, he told me that those things with his dad were still going on.
And I said, "What things?"
He said, "You know what things." Uh...
And so I sat down with him and told him to relax, and let's talk.
And, uh, I was very shaky myself,
just from the... the idea that, you know, my dad was still doing this.
And, um, basically, uh, trying to think about what we could do.
Lyle, being the macho, dominant, aggressive figure,
went to confront the father.
My dad, he came into the study.
You know, he had a cigarette lit.
I told him he was a... a fucking sick person.
I knew everything that was going on between him and Erik
and that he wasn't gonna touch my brother again.
I told him I would tell the police and that I would tell the family.
He just said, "You listen to me."
"What I do with my son is none of your business."
"And we're gonna forget this conversation ever took place."
There was another very heated argument
in which Kitty revealed that she had known about Erik,
the abuse, all the time.
And she said to Lyle, "What, do you think I'm stupid?"
She had known everything that had been going on,
and she hadn't done anything to protect her sons.
The fact that they didn't just have a dad that was doing this
but a mother that knew about it and didn't help them,
I don't understand how she didn't protect him. I...
I can't even explain it.
We talked about... I think I was the one that said that we...
weren't just gonna stay around waiting to die.
We were gonna try and get some ways of defending ourselves.
On Friday, our idea was just to get the guns.
That was what we wanted to do on Friday.
Did you end up in a gun store in San Diego?
Yes. We decided we would go ahead and buy shotguns, um,
and we felt that... we felt that if we were gonna get attacked,
it would be at night.
I went in the house, and, uh, I wanted to tell my mom
that we were leaving.
But my dad came in as soon as he heard the argument.
He spoke to my brother and told him to go upstairs to his room
and wait for him.
My dad left and went in the den.
I thought they were going ahead with their plan to kill us.
I ran upstairs to tell my brother that it was happening now.
We had the ammunition.
We were just loading as fast as possible.
We just burst through the doors.
I started firing.
In what direction?
In front of me.
What was in front of you?
My parents.
Do you remember firing a very close shot at your father?
I don't remember the shot, really.
But I... remember the picture.
What was it that happened after the shooting ended?
I heard a noise from my mom.
Uh, I ran around and shot my mom.
Where did you shoot her?
I just reached over, and I shot her close.
I started to scream.
I couldn't handle what I was seeing.
I dropped my gun, and I went into the foyer.
And I sat against the wall.
Where did you go from there?
I think we went to the movie theater.
We decided that we should go and get tickets.
And then we also decided we obviously had to get rid of the guns.
I really felt there was a small chance
that, uh, they weren't gonna figure out what happened.
After that, did you go back to the house?
Yes.
And I believe I went upstairs to call the police.
- Are they still there? - Yes.
- The people? - No, no, no.
We came out of the house,
and they just took over.
All right, in regards to the defense?
Yes, Your Honor. At this time, Erik Menendez's defense rests.
In regards to the Lyle Menendez?
At this time, the Lyle Menendez defense rests.
All right, the defendants have rested.
A lot of people who sympathize with the Menendez brothers
say it was self-defense.
Well, it wasn't from a legal perspective.
It was imperfect self-defense.
Imperfect self-defense. I-M, imperfect.
Meaning it's not perfect self-defense
because the normal definition of self-defense
is that the defendants believe
that they were about to be assaulted
in some sort of serious manner.
And they responded in order to protect themselves.
On the other hand,
imperfect self-defense,
the defendants honestly believe they were in danger.
But a reasonable person just pulled off the streets,
looking at it as if it was a motion picture,
would've said, "Well, that's not reasonable."
"They're not really in danger at this moment."
Which means that someone can be
so in fear of their lives
at that very moment,
but mistaken,
that they kill
in imperfect self-defense.
And if the jury believes that they acted unreasonably
but in an honest fear
that their father was going to kill them or hurt them severely,
it gives them a mitigation from murder
down to what we call voluntary manslaughter.
You've heard all of the evidence
and seen all of the evidence in the case.
The argument will proceed first with prosecution
then defense.
Thank you.
These two men were of age.
Let's say that Mr. and Mrs. Menendez had thrown them out
and said, "That's it. I'm tired of it. You're out of here."
These defendants had no right to live in that house.
It was not their house. It was their parents' house.
And there are many people whose parents say,
"When you turn 18, you're out of here."
We are not here to try Mr. and Mrs. Menendez
for being bad parents.
We are not here to try Jose Menendez
for being an alleged, not a convicted, but an alleged child molester.
This is a very straightforward case. When these two people were sitting there
watching television, and they got slaughtered by their sons.
Now the defense is going to give you explanations
for why all these things don't look as they do look.
It's kind of like if it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck
and it has feathers, it's a duck.
The defense is going to try to tell you the duck in this case is really a donkey,
but that's not correct.
I'm telling you now that whole defense was fabricated.
And it was done artfully, but it was fabricated.
And if I were an immoral person,
I would have fabricated it much the same way.
You need to decide what was going on in Erik and Lyle Menendez's mind
that night
before you can decide what kind of crime was committed.
The best that you can do in this case from our perspective
is a manslaughter.
Because that is an unreasonable killing in good faith.
And it is our suggestion to you that that is what has occurred here.
In first-degree murder,
they were looking at life in prison without parole.
Second-degree murder, under which a sentence if convicted
would've been less than that.
Or manslaughter, under which they would have served
some significantly reduced sentence
and been out in maybe, oh, five to ten years.
So that's what the defense was really going for.
Either this is a murder,
because everything we have told you is not true
and they killed for reasons unproven but completely different than what we say,
in which case it is a killing with malice,
or it is a killing that resulted
from the things that we have told you about,
and that it was done under a state of fear.
And if that is true, there is no malice, and it can only be manslaughter.
It's been 14 weeks of defense.
Did they do what they... they set out to do, do you think?
I think there's been a great deal of distance created between our case,
which had to do with the murders,
and their case which had to do with everything but the murders.
So, I think they succeeded in creating distance between our evidence,
which is pretty good,
and when the jury is going to deliberate, which is fairly soon.
It wasn't even a trial of guilt or innocence
because the boys had already confessed to it.
It was a question of degree.
I knew it was gonna be difficult,
because there were so many choices,
for us to agree on a choice.
If even one juror doesn't agree in a criminal case,
there's no verdict.
So it can be 11 to 1 either way, and you might have to retry the case again.
Jurors have just broken for lunch. They'll be back at work at about 1 p.m.
The Menendez trial in Los Angeles,
as jury deliberations continue for more than a week now,
everybody is wondering what's going on.
My worst fear came to pass
when we made the mistake of taking a show of hands.
All of the men raised their hands
in favor of first-degree murder.
And none of the women raised their hands.
So I knew that we had a battle on our hands.
A battle of the sexes.
The men instantly, instantly voted for... for murder.
I think the men had a really hard time accepting the fact
that a young man could possibly be abused by his father.
And the women were more... empathetic
in terms of understanding issues of abuse.
It was very emotional for me to think
that a child had been raised
the way that Erik had been raised.
And handled and treated that way.
And decided his only way of having a better life
was to have one without
the parents in it.
These jurors are feeling tremendous pressure
about coming to some kind of a conclusion about this.
We told the judge that we were at an impasse.
And he said, "Okay, but try again."
And we did try again.
As long as you have jurors talking, that they're not yelling and screaming
or at each other's throats, there's always a possibility of a verdict.
We deliberated for a month.
A month.
Stay away from this area here. Hey! Back!
I received your note this morning,
and, um, let me just read it into the record.
"We remain deadlocked since our last report to you."
"We have been unable to move closer to agreement
on any of the counts."
"If anything, we have become more entrenched in our positions."
"A poll taken this morning shows that the jury believes
there is no reasonable probability of our reaching a verdict."
And therefore, uh, the court finds that the jury is hopelessly deadlocked
and declares a mistrial.
Erik and Lyle's jury split down the middle.
About half voted for murder and half for manslaughter.
With the Erik Menendez jury deadlocked,
a mistrial has been declared in his case.
The jurors in the Lyle Menendez murder trial
have told the jury they are unable to reach a verdict. Hopelessly deadlocked.
I felt terrible that we couldn't reach a verdict.
We all did.
I felt like, in a way, it had been a big waste of time.
I do not think a decision can be reached.
It's too divisive an issue. There's too much information.
And I think the district attorney should just end it.
The prosecutors in this case understand,
in hindsight, that they lost control of the trial.
I didn't win.
Okay? I didn't lose in the sense that they didn't go home.
But I didn't win. And that was hard.
We are going to be trying the case a second time.
Some cases take more than one opportunity.
And I am pleased that at least we have that second opportunity.
Had they come back with voluntary manslaughter,
you would've seen an entirely different reaction from me
because I would've been utterly disappointed.
I went on TV and said I wouldn't retry this case.
I'd rather eat ground glass for a year. That's how I felt.
They didn't want me, and I didn't want them.
I have every intention of going forward with the death penalty, yes.
It was a very physically, emotionally, and intellectually debilitating process.
Um, it was very, very difficult. It's the hardest thing I've ever done.
I mean, it's been the strangest thing I've ever been through. My mother died.
My son was born.
I moved. I went through all this stuff. I haven't shed a tear in five months.
- Do you feel this is a victory for you? - No.
I've already expressed my views on that point.
A victory is when my client is free.
The Menendez mistrials were declared at the end of January of '94.
O.J. Simpson was arrested in June of '94.
O.J. Simpson is sitting in the back seat,
and he has a gun at his head.
Simpson was arrested last night after leading police
on a dramatic chase through the city.
He's scheduled to be arraigned early next week
on charges of murdering his ex-wife and her friend.
O.J. suddenly, you know, took over all of the media.
O.J. was Menendez on steroids.
I always say we did the warm-up trial for the O.J. Simpson spectacle.
O.J. today. O.J.
I think the general public had kind of forgotten
about Erik and Lyle Menendez.
They were much more enthralled by the O.J. Simpson case at that point.
How do you plead to counts one and two?
Absolutely 100% not guilty.
It's being called the trial of the century,
and it could last up to six months.
Nobody does it better than Hertz.
Erik was in the celebrity part of the prison with O.J.
And Lyle was on a different floor.
He was bored.
Really, his only sort of amusement was to talk on the phone.
Norma Novelli is talking about a controversial new book she's writing
about Lyle Menendez.
Novelli, a former confidante of Lyle's,
claims she talked with him extensively in jail for the book.
He would call her at seven o'clock at night.
Norma at some point started recording his phone calls.
Norma Novelli taped conversations with Lyle
over a two-and-a-half-year period.
During that time, Lyle admitted he would be willing to lie
to help his case
when he felt he had to counter damaging testimony
from psychologist Jerome Oziel.
The prosecution was coming out between the two trials,
and they said, "The Norma Novelli tapes are gonna bury Lyle Menendez."
I think it's pretty obvious there's a serious credibility problem
with this witness.
It turned out none of the tapes were ever admitted into the trial.
I think she had a crush on Lyle, which was really weird
since she was in her mid to late fifties and Lyle was in his twenties.
Robert Rand, who is writing his own book about the Menendez case,
has known Norma Novelli for years.
At some point, uh, she became disenchanted
because of his interest in other women.
Were you in love with Lyle Menendez?
No, I wasn't.
We, the jury, in the above entitled action,
find the defendant, Orenthal James Simpson,
not guilty of the crime of murder.
You were very anxious about the decision.
What do you think upon hearing it?
- Seriously? - Of course.
In a word?
Disgusting.
I don't agree with it. I think he's guilty.
Lose faith in the justice system?
Um, no. It teaches me what money can buy.
Did the Simpson verdict have an effect on your trial?
- Do you think? - I don't know.
- But I cried when it came in. - You cried?
I cried in the Van Nuys courthouse.
I thought all defense attorneys wanted a not guilty.
No, I said this is bad for the boys.
And everybody else.
- Why? - It's going to be payback time.
It is the retrial of Erik and Lyle Menendez.
The brothers, you'll recall, are accused of the brutal shotgun murder
of their parents in their Beverly Hills mansion back in 1989.
The second trial started within a week or ten days of the O.J. Simpson acquittal.
Some people have suggested that the timing on the second trial,
given that O.J. had just been acquitted,
is responsible for the different approach taken by the prosecution
and the different approach taken by the trial judge.
Judge Stanley Weisberg was embarrassed and humiliated by the lack of verdicts
in the first Menendez trial.
People were calling into radio stations and saying,
"What's wrong with that judge?"
And so he was determined
that he was gonna get a conviction in the second trial.
The judge asked us to disregard anything we knew coming into the trial.
I really didn't know what arguments had been made in the first trial
and what evidence, um, had been presented.
Judge Stanley Weisberg this time
says he will limit the number of experts and witnesses called
to support the so-called abuse excuse defense.
I'm surprised he doesn't take out a rifle in the courtroom and shoot him.
The second trial was very, very different from the first trial.
Number one, there was no television.
When there's a camera in the courtroom, it changes the dynamic of everything.
Everyone thought that this should be just a matter for the jury
rather than for a national audience.
The problem was that because Lyle did not testify,
a lot of what lawyers would call foundational testimony was not available.
And that left Lyle in a very precarious position.
The teachers and coaches and family and friends
were never on the stand in the second trial.
When the judge keeps out evidence that Diane Vander Molen said
that Lyle said, when he was eight years old,
"My dad's touching my penis,"
uh, and when the defense theory
is that Lyle has suffered sexual abuse from his father,
uh, that's evidence that just can't be kept out.
It just can't.
But it was.
Contradicting the decision made in the first trial,
he did not give the jury the option of finding manslaughter.
So the jury,
their choices are basically murder or nothing.
It's an interesting thing to consider
that the prosecution doesn't have to prove a motive.
The prosecution has to prove the elements of the crime were committed.
And the prosecution did that.
I've never been in this position before
where I was unable to actually put on my case
and unable to get the instructions that under all the case authority apply.
Let's be candid. Once the main theory of defense doesn't go to the jury,
the case is over.
When the judge decided what evidence we could consider,
we were given either first-degree murder as an option
or no crime whatsoever.
We voted unanimously to convict.
It took less than a week
for a jury to convict Erik and Lyle Menendez
of first-degree murder with special circumstances.
The reaction from Los Angeles District Attorney Gil Garcetti?
Whoo!
A fist thrust into the air.
A much needed victory for the DA after losing the O.J. Simpson case.
When the verdict came back, I fell apart.
I was happy they were convicted,
but I fell apart because they got convicted and I didn't do it.
The second jury convicted the brothers
because they saw a completely different trial
that was engineered to guarantee murder verdicts.
To show them so much less makes it not fair to the brothers.
Tom, we've just heard only seconds ago that the verdict is life without parole
for both Menendez brothers.
There's no way we could put them to death.
Even though that horrible crime happened and what they did was horrible,
there was other things...
there are good things about them that warrant their life.
Erik and Lyle Menendez,
the infamous brothers.
Tonight, for the very first time out of court, you will hear their story.
Tonight, watching our interview,
you can reach your own verdict about them.
It's important to you to stay together
when you get moved to the state prison?
Very important.
That is what's gotten us through these six years.
There's a good probability I will never see him again.
And...
And that, uh...
That I...
Some things that you cannot take
and there's some things that you can endure.
Uh...
With everything taken away,
it would be the last thing you can take.
The brothers took an appeal to the federal court system.
A three-judge panel said their appeal was without merit.
And that's the end of it.
There's... There's no further grounds for appeal.
He learned that he had a real talent for painting.
Before that, he was lucky to even draw stick figures.
I got a package from him.
We... We often wrote letters back and forth.
And this time, this big rolled-up paper came.
I opened it, and it was a beautiful oil painting.
Um...
The Beverly Hills brothers convicted of killing their parents
have been reunited in a Southern California prison.
This week, Erik Menendez moved into the same housing unit
as his brother, Lyle.
There are 200 men
standing in our studio audience right now.
Each one is holding a picture of themselves
at the age when they say they were first sexually abused.
In the fall of 2020,
my son came to me, and he said, "Dad, you have to take a look at TikTok."
"It's full of Menendez brothers videos."
And I was like, "What?"
I went to TikTok and found thousands of videos.
Most of them are becoming very well-educated on the case.
People think that these two brothers
should be out of prison by now.
The reason they decided to take their parents' lives that day
is because they feared for their own lives.
They didn't kill their parents for money. They were in fear of their lives.
They just wanted the abuse to stop.
And the fact that there is a completely new generation
that wasn't even born at the time of the first trial
that now supports the brothers is remarkable.
Millions of young people are looking back online
and they're reexamining old news stories from the '90s and 2000s particularly
and looking at them with a fresh set of eyes.
These kids went through some horrible things,
and it wasn't right what happened to them.
The Menendez case preceded the Me Too movement.
Society's understanding more about abuse
makes more people believe them.
If they were tried today, I think the most they'd get is manslaughter.
People are looking at the case with fresh eyes,
with a new understanding of what battered person syndrome is.
Boy, would I like to believe that. They're looking at it and saying,
"Well, wait a minute, there's an injustice here."
The only reason we're doing this special is because of the TikTok movement
to free the Menendi.
If that's how we're gonna try cases now, why don't we just, like, have a poll?
You present the facts, everybody gets to vote on TikTok,
and then we decide who gets to go home.
Your beliefs are not facts. They're just beliefs.
And by the way, all you TikTok people, I'm armed.
We got guns all over the house. So don't mess with me.