The Menendez Brothers: Wealth, Secrets, and Murder
Aug. 20, 1989, Beverly Hills, California: It’s almost midnight when the 911 call comes in. A young man is on the other end, weeping hysterically, saying his mom and dad had been shot.
Police arrive at the Menendez mansion to find a shocking crime scene. In the family room, apparently as they were watching a movie and eating strawberry shortcake, José and Kitty Menendez have been shot multiple times with two 12-gauge shotguns. José had been shot once in the back of the head and four times through the chest. Kitty had been shot so many times she was unrecognizable.
Police talk their sons, Lyle, 21, and Erik, 18. The brothers say they had left their parents earlier that evening to see a movie, and when they came home, they found them murdered. Asked if they knew anyone who might want to do their parents harm, the brothers suggest it was a mob hit.
So the Los Angeles police department looks into the Menendez family, hoping to find some clue that would point them in the direction of their killers.
The Menendez Family
José Menendez was born into a life of wealth and privilege in Cuba’s high society. His family encouraged a “macho,” aggressive attitude in him from an early age. Not surprisingly, he was known to his neighbors as a bully and a “monster.”
But when he was 16, the Communist revolution had roiled his home country, so his family sent him to the United States for his safety. After he graduated high school, he was accepted into Southern Illinois University. There he met Mary Louise “Kitty” Andersen, a beauty queen with dreams of becoming an actress. The two were wed in 1963 and moved to New York City, where Kitty taught school while José earned his degree in accounting at Queens College.
By all accounts, José was demanding, overbearing, and at times, physically abusive. After Kitty had Lyle in 1968, José demanded she quit working and stay at home to be a full-time mother, dashing her dreams of acting. Erik was born two years later.
After college, José went on to start or manage several companies, always striving for more money, more status, more expensive things to show off. José taught his boys as he had been taught: that money and status were the most important things in life, and you should do whatever it takes to get them. And his sons were, for him, two more possessions to show off.
Consequently, the boys were raised with a confusing mixture of indulgence and iron control. On the one hand, they were given everything they wanted, regardless of cost. Kitty did their homework for them, and whenever the boys did something wrong, their parents used their money to shield them from any consequences.
On the other hand, José treated the boys as extensions of himself, and demanded they live their lives as he dictated. They were told how to dress, which friends they could and could not have, and which women they could and could not date.
Lyle, José determined, would go to Princeton, the ultimate status symbol. The fact that Lyle was only a mediocre student made no difference. José simply made a $50,000 donation to the school, assuring his acceptance.
The Perfect Image Begins to Crack
The Menendez family moved to California in 1987, when José became an executive at Paramount studios. They made their home in a wealthy part of Calabasas.
The Menendez brothers, now teens with access to as much money as they wanted, spent like princes. But despite all the money, they were beginning to chafe against the strict control their father exercised over them.
Like bored, privileged kids anywhere, they turned to crime for the thrill of it. They started burglarizing the homes of their friends and classmates. In one heist, they made off with over $100,000 in cash and property. The stolen items were inside the van they were driving (also stolen) when they were pulled over for speeding.
Once again, José used his money to protect his sons. He went to every one of the families the boys robbed and apologized, then asked them how much the value of the stolen items were. Whatever sum they quoted, José wrote them a check for that amount. Once the victims were satisfied, the Menendez family moved to Beverly Hills to put some distance between themselves and their former neighbors. There, José bought a $5 million Spanish-style mansion that had formerly been home to Prince, Michael Jackson, and Elton John.
But the burglaries were more than just childish hijinks, and José was losing the pride he had in his sons.
In court for the burglaries, Erik pled guilty and claimed to have acted alone so as to protect his now-adult brother. He was sentenced to probation and ordered to attend counseling sessions with Dr. Jerome Ozeil.
José, being the control freak he was, demanded to know everything that went on in those counseling sessions. Ozeil, with Erik’s knowledge, agreed to tape the sessions.
Meanwhile, Lyle was not doing well in Princeton. After a short time, he was put on suspension for plagiarism. José and Kitty both were facing up to the fact that their sons were not going to be the great successes they had hoped for. José berated them frequently, telling them they were disappointments, and even accused Lyle of being gay — which, for a macho man like José, was the one unforgivable sin. As her family crumbled, Kitty began drinking heavily and taking Valium. They tried to reign the boys in by taking away their credit cards. But the boys just stole another card from Kitty’s purse.
In the spring of 1989, José told his brother that he was taking his sons out of his will — leaving them out of an inheritance worth at least $14 million. Later Kitty would have a conversation with a friend where she said the same thing, only this time, the boys could hear them.
With their parents dead, the Menendez brothers inherit their entire estate, plus $500,000 in life insurance. While Erik still seems emotionally wrecked, Lyle is on a spending spree. The two buy a new Porsche, a Rolex watch, expensive clothes, courtside seats at a Knicks game, and even a restaurant. They take lavish vacations, hire a private tennis coach, and rent out an expensive penthouse in Marina del Rey. Over six months, they blow through an estimated $1 million.
A Motive for Murder
Taken together, police begin to see a clearer picture of the Menendez family — and a motive for murder. But without evidence, the brothers can’t be charged.
Enter Dr. Oziel and his tapes. Several months after the murders, Oziel’s girlfriend goes to the police with some shocking information. Apparently Oziel is afraid of Lyle. After the murders, Erik had confessed to Oziel. Erik said he had wanted to kill his parents right away, so as not to give them time to rewrite their wills. But Lyle had wanted to wait and plan it out in more detail.
Erik would later confess that after shooting their parents — stopping to reload when they ran out of ammunition — they got in the car and dumped the weapons somewhere off Mulholland Drive, then threw the spent shells and their bloody clothes in a dumpster at a gas station. He said they then bought movie tickets, then went to Santa Monica to try and find one of Lyle’s friends who might give them an alibi. But they couldn’t find the guy, so they drove back home, where Lyle made the 911 call.
Erik told Oziel that they had committed the perfect crime, and that their dad would be proud.
At their next session, Lyle had come in with his brother, and the two had threatened Oziel. So Oziel told his girlfriend everything. His girlfriend told the police, who got a court order to hand over the tapes.
On March 8, 1990, Lyle was arrested. Erik was in Israel competing in a tennis tournament when he was informed that he needed to turn himself in. So he and his tennis coach flew to London to “calm down” for a few days before returning to the US, where he too was arrested.
The question of the admissibility of the tapes held up the trial until December 1992, when the two were indicted for first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. The brothers both pled not guilty.
The Menendez Brothers’ Trial
The Menendez brothers’ trial began July 20, 1993. The brothers faced separate juries, but at the same trial, which was broadcast almost in its entirety by Court TV — to blockbuster ratings. The term “media circus” is thrown around a lot, but in this case, it was an understatement. People lined up as early as 4 a.m. on trial days, hoping to get a spot in the gallery. Young women and teens thronged the handsome brothers like they were rock stars.
Adding to the soap-opera atmosphere of the trial, the brothers’ defense was that they didn’t shoot their parents for the money, but in self-defense. They had become enraged after years of physical and sexual abuse at the hands of their father. Their testimony about the abuse was both breathtaking and heartbreaking. If it was all an act — as many people watching the trial believed it to be — the brothers missed their calling as actors. Bolstering their claims, a family friend and a cousin testified that the boys had told them of the abuse when they were children, but that Kitty had done nothing.
But there was also plenty to back up the prosecution’s case that this murder had been premeditated. Besides his confession to Oziel, there was a play Erik had written in high school in which a son murders his rich parents — and the events in the play match up chillingly with the actual crime.
In the end, both brothers’ trials ended in mistrials. Their retrial was scheduled for 1995, and it was to be very different from the first trial. First, all the testimony about their abuse was disallowed. There were to be no cameras in the courtroom. And — though no one could have predicted this — it would take place at the same time as the OJ Simpson trial.
Meanwhile, the narrative of rich, spoiled kids killing their parents in cold blood took hold in the public consciousness. Their allegations of sexual abuse weren’t just disbelieved, they became a running joke on shows like Saturday Night Live. The fact that they hadn’t been put behind bars was a source of a lot of public anger.
So when the Menendez brothers faced their retrial, everything was stacked against them. Unsurprisingly, they were both convicted and sentenced to life without possibility of parole. They were incarcerated in separate prisons for 22 years, until April of 2018, when Lyle was moved to the same unit as Erik in the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego County, California. The two were assigned to a beautification project painting murals on the prison walls.
Since their trial, the case has fascinated America; it has all the hallmarks of a particularly lurid soap opera — a brutal murder, a wealthy family, sordid secrets, lies. In 1994, before their retrial, their case inspired two made-for-television movies: Menendez: A Killing in Beverly Hills on CBS and Honor Thy Father and Mother: The True Story of the Menendez Murders on Fox. They’ve been featured on multiple true-crime television shows over the years. More recently, in 2017, they were the subjects of a Lifetime original movie, Menendez: Blood Brothers, and a documentary on ABC, Truth and Lies: The Menéndez Brothers — American Sons, American Murderers.
The eternal question surrounding this case has always been, were they cold-blooded killers who murdered their parents for greed, or victims of years of abuse who killed out of rage? I submit they were both. Children can be both very wealthy and also be victims of abuse. They did plan the murder ahead of time and not in a fit of rage, as they claimed. But the murders could have been motivated as much by rage as by greed. After all, they had been raised by José Menendez to love wealth and status for its own sake, and to be ruthless in doing whatever it takes to get it. Perhaps, as Erik told Oziel, “he would have been proud.”
