Crime Weekly - S3 Ep200: The Menendez Brothers: Natural Selection (Part 1)

Episode Date: April 19, 2024

Beverly Hills, located just southwest of the Hollywood Hills, was and still is a place that the rich, famous and glamorous choose to make their homes. Known for its opulence and luxury, the homes in Beverly Hills are some of the most expensive in the United States, with some properties worth tens of millions of dollars. But behind the country clubs, cocktail hours and shopping trips, there was something much darker brewing in a high end Beverly Hills neighborhood. On August 20th, 1989, business executive Jose Menendez and his wife Kitty were brutally murdered while sitting in the living room of their sprawling Mediterranean style mansion, and what seemingly made this tragedy worse was the fact that their two son’s, Lyle and Erik, were the ones to make the gruesome discovery of their bodies. Suddenly orphaned, the Menendez brothers were initially looked at with sympathy, but soon they would be on trial for the murder of their parents. Lyle and Erik didn’t deny that they had taken their parents' lives, but according to them it was because they were scared and broken down after a lifetime of abuse. At the time, most people believed this was a fabricated excuse, and the prosecution gave greed and money as the true motive. A tragedy and trial played out for the world on television, ending with both Erik and Lyle confined at the Richard Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego for life, with no chance of parole. Recently, newly discovered evidence and testimony has raised questions of whether Erik and Lyle were being honest about the constant state of stress and fear their parents forced them to live under. Use code CRIMEWEEKLY at www.CrimeCon.com for a discount on your CrimeCon 2024 Nashville tickets! Try our coffee!! - www.CriminalCoffeeCo.com Become a Patreon member -- > https://www.patreon.com/CrimeWeekly Shop for your Crime Weekly gear here --> https://crimeweeklypodcast.com/shop Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CrimeWeeklyPodcast Website: CrimeWeeklyPodcast.com Instagram: @CrimeWeeklyPod Twitter: @CrimeWeeklyPod Facebook: @CrimeWeeklyPod ADS: 1. EatIQBAR.COM - Text WEEKLY to 64000 for 20% off ALL IQBAR products and FREE shipping! 2. HelixSleep.com/CrimeWeekly - Use code HELIXPARTNER20 for 20% off ALL mattresses and 2 FREE pillows! 3. LiquidIV.com/CrimeWeekly - Use code CRIMEWEEKLY for 20% off anything in your order! 4. SKIMS.com - Get FREE shipping on orders over $75! And don't forget to select PODCAST and then our channel in the dropdown after you order and let them know we sent you! 5. TalkSpace.com/CrimeWeekly - Use code SPACE80 to get $80 off your first month!

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Known for its opulence and luxury, the homes in Beverly Hills are some of the most expensive in the United States, with some properties worth tens of millions of dollars. But behind the country clubs, cocktail hours, and shopping trips, there was something much darker brewing in a high-end Beverly Hills neighborhood. On August 20th, 1989, business executive Jose Menendez and his wife Kitty were brutally murdered while sitting in the living room of their sprawling, Mediterranean-style mansion. And what seemingly made this tragedy worse was the fact that their two sons, Lyle and Eric, were the ones to make the gruesome discovery of their bodies. Suddenly orphaned, the Menendez brothers were initially looked at with sympathy, but soon they would be on trial for the murders of their parents.

While on trial, Lyle and Eric did not deny that they had taken their parents' lives, but according to them it was because they were scared and broken down after a lifetime of abuse. At the time, most people believed this was a fabricated excuse, a way to avoid responsibility, and the prosecution gave greed and money as the true motive. A tragedy and trial played out for the world on television, ending with both Eric and Lyle confined at the about the constant state of stress and fear that their parents forced them to live under, and whether it is an acceptable excuse or justification for what they back to Crime Weekly. I'm Stephanie Harlow. And I'm Derek Levasseur. So today we are jumping in to a very highly requested case, the Menendez murders. And I mean, since I've been doing YouTube, people have been asking me to do this case. And I knew it was going to be a large undertaking. So I put it off. But it felt like the right time because the Menendez brothers are back in the news. And in general, this case has been very interesting, I suppose, to a lot of people I think people are Fascinated by it because it happened in an upper-class neighborhood It happened to an upper-class family and just the way that Jose and Kitty Hernandez were murdered and to find out that their own sons

Were behind their murders. It was shocking to everybody because it was brutal. It was bloody there wasn't any compassion in these kills. And it has been said that the Menendez brothers case has blazed the trail for the true crime genre. Jonathan Towers, who's the VP of development for Fox Nation, says, quote, it's the first case in American media history that was something more than a legal story. It was a form of entertainment. End quote. The brothers have been depicted in sketches on SNL. Jokes were cracked about them by Jay Leno on The Tonight Show. Court TV aired the entire trial during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. And viewers on social media showed that the scorn and scrutiny the brothers were under during the 90s is not necessarily as widespread as it is today. And there's now more empathy and understanding for what they went through as children that may have driven them to such lengths. The mental health and trauma of a child was not as well understood in the early 90s. And the current

legal team for the brothers are seeking a new hearing based on recently found evidence that Jose Menendez may have abused and molested other children during the time that his sons claim he was doing it to them. The lawyers say that this new evidence supports their claims of abuse, and the brothers should have been convicted of manslaughter instead of first-degree murder. Like I said, public understanding of trauma and abuse for children, including male children, which has been overlooked for many, many years, is now sort of being more well understood, more well talked about. And we have many cases that have happened over the last decades that have raised awareness, such as the molestation of children at the hands of members of the Catholic Church,

the trial of Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky. We have actors speaking out about abuse that they encountered in the show business world. There's just a new documentary now about what I think it was Nickelodeon or the Disney Channel and what these child actors went through at the hands of adults who they were under the care of in their jobs. Quiet on set. Quiet on set. Was that Nickelodeon or Disney? Nickelodeon. Either way, Disney too. Okay. Disney too. And it's just a different landscape. And if the

Menendez brothers went on trial today, I think that the outcome would have been different, considering that there were many people who came forward and said that Jose and Kitty Hernandez maybe weren't the best parents. So we're diving into that today. How are you feeling about it? I feel great. I like that we're getting back to our roots and we're doing a deep dive. It's hard to do these deep dives case after case because you end up doing the case for two months. So it was good to do some shorter series, which we did. And you guys have been asking us to do Menendez Brothers since the beginning of Crime Weekly. So this is a great opportunity to do it. I'm really fascinated in hearing the

facts of the case because I do not know them. I obviously know about the Menendez Brothers. I think everybody does. But to hear about the details of it, because the question that I'm going into this case with the main question at least is, is what happened to them? If I'm to take everything they say at face value, is there a world where that would justify a premeditated double homicide? And I think that's what we're looking at here. Now they're going to argue something different. I'm assuming, I don't know the details, but if, if based on what they were charged with and what they were found guilty of, their argument was, listen, based on what we went through, we had no other choice. So I'm really interested to hear those details and to hear their perspectives on it and to

try to decide whether or not it's true or if it was used as an alibi to try to get off a trial, which we do know can happen. So I think everybody who knows this case may have some opinions on it, but like we pride ourselves on is when we do these deep dives is finding pieces of information that you may not know of so that when you leave this case, you really do have a 360 degree perspective of it, not only from a research perspective, but also from a detective's perspective, someone who's worked a case like this or a homicide before, and we have all different angles being covered at one time. Yeah, I do want that to be our objective to sort of look at this case through a 2024 lens and figure out, you know, I mean, obviously, I don't think that you should kill anybody ever.

But there are extenuating circumstances where somebody may be under a good deal of mental and emotional abuse and may feel that they have no other choice. So is that what happened here? That is exactly what I want to investigate and kind of pull apart while we're doing this. So let's dive in. As always, with deep dives such as these to understand what happened at the end, we have to go back to the beginning and we're going to start with the life of Lyle and Eric's father, Jose Enrique Menendez, who was born on May 6, 1944, in Havana, Cuba. Jose's parents, his father was also named Jose and his mother was named Maria, they'd grown up next door to each other in Cuba, and they were married in 1938. Maria was a professional athlete who won five gold medals for swimming during the 1935 Central American and Caribbean Olympic Games, becoming the first woman to be inducted into the

Cuban Hall of Fame. Jose was a pro soccer player and successful businessman who ran his own accounting firm. Together, the couple had three children, Teresita, born in 1940, Marta, born in 1942, and Jose, born in 1944. Apparently, according to his sisters, Jose was his mother's favorite, and the girls would be disciplined by Maria, but Jose never was. He was her cute boy, Marta said. If he did something wrong, it was always cute. Jose and his sisters spent some time at a Jesuit school in Kentucky, where Jose ran track and played American football, exhibiting the natural athleticism that he had inherited from his parents. But then, on February 16, 1959, Fidel Castro was sworn in as prime minister of Cuba, and he began to transform the country into the first communist state in the Western Hemisphere, becoming a symbol of revolution in Latin America. The promises Castro had been making to garner support and gather power had sounded good, but when he was officially established, the dictator began making more radical policies.

Cuba's private commerce and industry were nationalized. The free press was a thing of the past. Political enemies were beaten and jailed with no trial. He took land and money from his own people and essentially removed the term human rights from Cuba altogether. Because of Castro's hatred for the United States, Jose and his sisters had to come home to Cuba, where they started going to school there. But a 15-year-old Jose was outraged to find that education had become secondary to government propaganda, and he became an outspoken critic of Castro and his regime. Afraid that her son would be thrown into prison, never to be released, Maria Hernandez started making moves to get Jose, Teresita, and Marta out of the country. In October of 1960,

Jose boarded a flight to Miami, accompanied by Teresita's fiancé, Carlos Baralt. Jose ended up living with distant relatives in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, and reportedly he did not adapt well to this change. He was homesick, he missed his mother and his country and his friends, and he was certainly depressed, but he was also angry. Angry at Fidel Castro for taking his life away from him. Jose only spoke Spanish, but he rarely had a conversation with anyone in those early days in Pennsylvania, opting instead to stay alone in his attic room, listening to the radio for news coming out of Cuba, vowing to return one day and single-handedly defeat Castro. As time passed, Jose did settle

into his new life, becoming the star of his high school swim team and earning a swimming scholarship to Southern Illinois University. It was at SIU where Jose met a beautiful blonde named Mary Louise Anderson during a philosophy class. Mary was a senior, majoring in communications. She was attractive and bubbly and blonde, a former beauty queen who had brains and aspirations to work in broadcasting one day. Everyone called her Kitty, and since she was a young girl, she had exhibited main character energy. But at SIU, Kitty did well academically, and she worked behind the camera at the campus television station, where she gave play-by-plays of sporting events, putting her in close proximity to the college's athletes. And at the time, having a woman behind the camera and also

talking about sports, this was sort of unheard of. It wasn't considered to be a feminine thing. It wasn't considered to be something women could or would do. And Kitty did that because she wanted to be in the entertainment industry. She wanted to produce. She wanted to direct. She wanted to act. And she had a lot of dreams and aspirations, basically. And she had been a former beauty pageant winner, and she had the charm, the charisma. She was outgoing. But then in the spring of 1963, Kitty found herself in a passionate love affair with an exotic sophomore named Jose Menendez. And on July 8th, 1963, the two were married. Because they were broke college students,

Jose and Kitty ended up relocating to New York City, where they lived with Jose's parents, who had left Cuba the previous year after Castro took their money and their assets. Talk about Jose, though, surrounding himself with, like, strong, independent, successful women between his mom. Would you say five gold medals? Yeah, his mom was an award-winning athlete. Yeah. I mean, talk about an underachiever. Who, Jose or her? I'm being sarcastic. Her. Yeah.

Just killing. And then obviously you have Kitty who is on the up, up and up. She's still just on the uprise. But again, someone who at the foundation has these strong aspirations to be the best version of herself. Kind of sounds like, and we say that a lot, right? A lot of times we fall in love with people who are similar to our parents, especially if we had good relationships with them. So I do wonder in hindsight if Jose saw a lot of his mother in Kitty and that's why he was attracted to her. So what's interesting though is, yes, his mother Maria was an award winning gold medalist, a stunningly amazing athlete. And because of Maria and Jose Sr.'s standing as professional athletes in Cuba, it took a while for Castro's regime to really reach them. You know, they were kind of given initially some... Preferential treatment?

Maybe preferential treatment, yeah. Right, right. But as soon as things started getting hard, you know, obviously they had to get out of the country. But when Maria married Jose's father, she became a wife and a mother. And I think men like Jose fall in love with women or are, you know, in admiration of women because of these features and characteristics they exhibit of, you know, independence and being driven and successful and talented and dazzling.

But then once they're with these women, they want to sort of dim their light because it's like, OK, I was drawn to you because of this, because you dazzle and you sparkle. But I don't really want anybody else to be drawn to you because of this. So as soon as Kitty met Jose, her dreams of being in broadcasting were done. He was like, no, you're not going to. No wife of mine. That's not a place for a woman. You're not going to be doing that, running around with actors and directing films. You're going to be a mother and a wife. That is what I want from the person I'm with. And so that is what you're going to do. And she. And then there are women who, and even men sometimes, where they decide based on the dynamic of the family and the way one of the two individuals in that relationship are doing, the other person decides to stay home and raise their children. So I get where you're coming from. There's a world where we do have cases where one individual sacrifices their dreams for the betterment of the kids and the family while the other person gets to pursue whatever they want to pursue.

And then we have other worlds where that dynamic works, where one person is willing or enjoys being the stay at home parent and doing that. So let's take our first break before we continue. We'll be right back. In New York City, Jose began attending Queens College to study accounting while he washed dishes at the Ritzy 21 Club in Manhattan. And Kitty got a job teaching at a high school in the Bronx. And for a while, she was their main source of income for a few years. She was bringing in more money because he was, you know, going part time to school and part time to work. And soon the couple had enough money to get their own little apartment in Queens. And we'll see that as external situations improve for Jose and Kitty, such as money and status, their marriage is actually going to

deteriorate. But during this time in their little apartment in Queens, they were broke but happy because they were building something together. They were going forward towards a common goal. Two months after his mother and father were murdered, Eric Hernandez spoke about the early years of his parents' marriage, saying, quote, My mom says that it is the closest they've ever been, the happiest days they ever had or during that time because it brought them so close together. Money kind of brings you apart. It loosens the ties because you no longer need to be as close, end quote. I agree with this in some ways, but I also disagree with it to the point where if you're close, you're close. If you love somebody, if you truly love somebody and you support them and you're there for them, nothing's going to change that.

I think that especially during this time, when Kitty and Jose were married, it was much more of a patriarchal society where the women really didn't have a choice about what they ended up doing if they were married. And money in that situation can be a form of independence and freedom for a woman if she has her own money. So you shouldn't be codependent on somebody. Like Eric says, then you don't need that person. You should never be with somebody because you need them. You should be with somebody because you want to be. And it's even better when you don't actually need to be with them because then they know and you know that you're together because that's what you want, not because you don't have another choice. So I disagree with that. But once again, this was a different time that Kitty and Jose were married. And it was even a different time when

Eric gave the statement to a reporter. It was 1990. So I could see a world, too, though, where growing up, if you don't have a lot, you know, not a lot of money, you appreciate the small things. I feel like even with my own kids now, I see when I was growing up, you know, it was like a privilege to get a pair of sneakers for school that year. For real. And I think a lot of people listening to us can relate to that where it's like you got your new pair of sneakers at the beginning of the year and that was your pair of sneakers till the end of the year. And you appreciated those sneakers more and you took care of them more. I know when your mom or my mom or my dad went out to get me something, I was more thankful of it, where I feel like as you get more money, even with my kids, and I love my kids, there's an expectation there like, oh, these are dirty. I'll just you're even if you're a billionaire, you don't have to spoil your kids and make them entitled. But with adults like you shouldn't love somebody more because they financially provide for you because you can appreciate each other more because all you have is that person that you're looking across from. But when you have outside distractions, outside things, a lot of things that we don't personally need, but we have because of whatever resources we

have available, you can lose sight of what's right in front of you. And I'm not saying that's always the case. I agree with what you're saying, but I do think there is a world where when you're down and out and you have nothing or no one to really rely on except that other person, it can make you a lot closer. And it's you against the world in that moment. And then when other factors come into play, and if you're lucky enough to be successful, sometimes we've seen those stories in movies, right? Where the up and coming couple that, hey, listen, you know my favorite movie, The Greatest

Showman. It's a great movie for that. When they just had each other, right? It's actually a great example. Yeah, on the roof with the little paper lantern thing and it was just like such a happy moment. But they didn't have anything, but they also had everything. Yeah. And he didn't realize it. But you don't know that you have everything until you get more.

Exactly. And I think that could be, I mean, I'm looking in the mind of Eric Menendez. Like I know what he meant behind that quote, but that's one way you could look at it. Yeah. Well, that's sweet. I like it. So when Jose Menendez was at SIU, he wasn't like the best academically because he was focused on swimming and he was focused on sports. But when he started at Queens College, it was almost like he had shifted, like he had

grown up a little bit. You know, he was a kid before. He didn't have any responsibilities. But now he was a married man and he had goals. He had goals that he wanted to reach. He wanted to be successful like his father and his mother were. So in 1967, when Jose Menendez graduated from Queens College, he graduated in the top 10 percent of his class with degrees in economics and accounting. And then he started applying for jobs. And this dude, Jose Menendez, was so, I don't know, like, because you

didn't even have a job at that point to show prospective employers and say, see how good I did in this job. He simply had a college degree. But because he was so well-spoken, because he was so confident in himself, he got a job and he was hired by the first firm he interviewed with, which let me tell anybody who's gone to college to get a degree to go into a certain career, that never happens. And after you've been declined and turned down by five, six, seven jobs. You're like, why did I even go to college, man? This is horrible. That never happens. He walks into his first job interview fresh out of college with nothing but a college degree and a smile. And they're like, you're hired. And not only that, he got paid very well. So the company that hired him was a firm called Coopers and Librand. And he would continue to be more and more successful

as the years went on, but his starting salary was $25,000 a year, which today would hold the purchasing power of over 250,000. He was sent to Chicago with this company to audit a business called Lions Container Services. And during his evaluation of this business, Jose discovered that the company

wasn't doing well financially. They were headed for bankruptcy. So he made some recommendations. He put together a restructuring plan, and it ended up saving LCS a ton of money. This plan included firing their current comptroller. And when that was done, the company actually offered Jose the comptroller job with a salary hike of $50,000 more than he was making with Coopers and Librand. So now he's making $75,000 a year, which I mean, I didn't look and see how much that would be today. But if 25K was 250, that's a lot. It's a lot of money. That's like almost a million dollars today, right? Three, six, nine. Yeah, it's maybe over a million dollars today. So now Kitty doesn't have to work anymore, which is exactly what Jose wanted, because like I talked about, Kitty had won Dork in broadcasting, but her husband felt this was inappropriate because she was a woman and her full time job could only be acting, not in a television show or movie, but as a wife and a mother to his children. So Kitty and Jose moved to Hinsdale,

Illinois, so that he could be closer to this new company. And Jose attacked his new position with vigor. His first year at LCS, the company's revenue went from $2.8 million to $5.2 million. And by year three, they were bringing in $12 million annually. But in 1972, LCS was bought out and Jose was let go. Temporarily unemployed, Jose's father helped his son and daughter-in-law pay their mortgage while Jose looked for another job, which he soon found at Hertz Rent-A-Car, working as the director of operations. I want to mention something about Jose's father helping Jose and Kitty pay for their mortgage because they had purchased a house. Their mortgage on a full ass three bedroom house in Illinois was $750 a month. Those were the days.

Those were the days. That might be your electric bill these days. Honestly. You have, right? Yeah, it's crazy. No, it's crazy. But I mean, that's expected to a certain degree that, you know, pricing does go up. destroy everything. And that is exactly what we did. So Jose gets a job with Hertz Rent-A-Car, right? And as he always did, he quickly began to prove his worth. Within two years, he'd been

promoted to VP of the car and leasing divisions. He was helping the company save money. He was bringing in more money. And that got him another promotion to head of U.S. operations. Now, Jose Menendez was objectively and inarguably sharp as a tack. He was charismatic. He was good at whatever job he set his mind to. He's kind of one of these people, and it sucks because from all reports, he wasn't a good person at all. But he's one of these people who's like so delusional about their own ability that it almost acts as their superpower. They go into every situation thinking there's nothing they can't do. And it has something to do with like neuroplasticity too. And the fact that like your brain has so much ability and you technically

could do anything, right? That you wanted to do anything. And he knows this and he's going in and he's like, I don't care if I'm trained in it, I'll learn it. I don't care if I know nothing about containers. In six months, I'm going to be an expert on containers. And it was this very innate and almost like universe given ability to just go into something, anything and kill it, like be the best at it. And this, of course, is going to develop in any person a large ego over time. You know, I think everybody needs disappointments and setbacks in their lives and they need to feel those to to have a little bit of humility. But at the same time, it was Jose's ego that allowed him to go from job to job to job, knocking it out of the park and making more and more and more money,

but not making friends, right? Because from all reports, Jose Menendez was not universally well liked. His brother-in-law, Carlos Brault, said that Jose was brutal and had no compassion or respect for his colleagues or his staff. He would ridicule people. He had this infuriating, sarcastic, and condescending way of speaking that would immediately make even the most alpha dude feel like he was two inches tall. And if someone didn't share Jose's opinions or if somebody challenged him or, you know, was even something as simple as being like, oh, that's a good idea. But what about this? Why don't we try this instead? Oh, no, he did not like that.

He would use this tactic of saying very rude and disrespectful things, but he would do it in a quiet, calm, controlled manner. And if the person he was talking to was getting defensive, which if he's saying rude and disrespectful things, sometimes they will, Jose would then mock them for losing their control. And he'd be like, oh, you're having a little temper tantrum, you know, like, oh, emotionally regulate yourself, handle yourself. What's going on with you? Look at yourself.

Kind of a very, you know, abusive kind of. And he would just do anything to make them look like they were in the wrong, even if he was in the wrong. One of Jose's favorite things to say to someone when he wanted to cut them down was, well, then you haven't really done your job. So what are we paying you for? Carlos Barolt said, quote, Jose had this remarkable ability to make other people feel very, very small. He considered himself superior to others, end quote. And this is going to be a theme that we're going to see throughout this series, that Jose Menendez felt he was better than everyone else,

and he told his sons that they were better than everyone else. Is there also an element of this that could be where, I'm not defending Jose Menendez, I'm just learning about him now, but just as I'm going along on this story, this journey with everyone else, is there an element of this as well, where his expectation for excellence, what he expects of himself, that drive, that determination, which has made him so successful, anything less than that is unacceptable in his eyes. Now his approach to addressing that and dealing with it and trying, you could be good at what you're doing, but not a good leader, right? So is his way of working great and it's

successful and it's proven to work, but when he sees someone who doesn't display that same level of drive and determination, he views them as inferior and therefore not worthy of his presence, that he has to make sure they know that. Yes, I think that's exactly what it is, but I don't know how that makes it better. Not better. Not better. Again, I think as an employer, as a leader, you can always strive to get more out of your employees or the people that work underneath you because clearly the position you're in, in most cases, you're there for a reason. You're there because you've cracked open the secret sauce to, hey, this is how we're gonna get

to where we need to be, follow me. And you can lead by example, or you can demean and discredit and insult the people underneath you and say they're not worthy or they're worthless or they're a disappointment, which more than likely won't lead to that. He could have done it a different way is what I'm getting at. Well, I mean, just the fact that you think somebody is inferior to you because they

don't have the same work ethic as you, I think is a problematic starting thought. You know, even without him vocalizing that, that's still something you shouldn't necessarily be feeling because nobody is the same. Right? So, and I mean, honestly, if you see other people around you who don't have the same work ethic, it should only make you feel like, okay, well, I have an edge in life. Like they got to do what they got to do, and I'm going to do what I have to do. But I have the edge because while they're, you know, reading magazines on their lunch hour and extending their lunch hour to two hours, I'm working. You don't need to

force people into submission to be like you or live the way you think that they would live. And I think that's where the abusive and controlling tactics come in. Because why do you care so much? You can't control other people. You can only control yourself. Anybody who attempts to exert their will, their force, their influence to cause somebody else to live in a way that that person doesn't want to live, hasn't chosen to live. That's a problem. Stay in your lane, mind your business, focus on yourself and what you're doing. And it also seemed kind of like he almost wanted people to know that they sucked and that he was better. It was kind of like- Oh, interesting.

Yeah. It was this whole, don't you see me? Look at me, promoted, making all this money. I've saved them company. I got an award. What are you doing? It was like, I'm better than you. And I have to continue reminding you that I'm better than you. Delivery as a leader was terrible. But at worst case, it's what you're saying, where it's like a situation where regardless of what they did, even when they were doing a good job, it wasn't good enough because in his eyes. Yes, yes, exactly. Nobody would ever be able to display the level of excellence that he was capable of. So even when you were succeeding in his eyes, it was still inferior to what he would have done or how he would have done it. He had impossible expectations for people and he would always continue moving the goalpost.

And apparently, and I am getting huge personality disorder vibes here, like maybe NPD, because he loved to hear himself talk. And this is once again, this whole, I can't just be satisfied with knowing that I am a hard worker and that I can tackle and be successful at anything I set my mind to. That's not enough. I have to know that everyone else knows it. So people like this will make themselves – they just go through life with this era of like grandiosity. And so a colleague of Jose's at Hertz, Kevin McDonald said, quote, you would go into a meeting and he'd keep you there all day. And he'd just go on and on and on. You'd walk out of there. I mean, you just say to yourself, my God, I never want to go through that again. End quote. You know, it's interesting because where I'm at,

as we're going through the story, and I love when we go back to the beginning and talk about the foundation of these stories, because most of the time you just start with the people who are involved in the incident, right? But we're starting with the history behind it. And what it does is it gives you a better understanding of our victims. And in some cases, the victimology is not very positive, right? Understanding the victims and who they were as people may help you understand how they ended up victims in the first place. And again, it's not always for the right reasons. So as I'm looking at this, I'm asking myself, especially in the context of this overall case of why did this happen and what the brothers have alleged, you start to get an understanding of Jose Menendez

and how he treated people that weren't blood related. It's a peek behind the curtain. And this is earlier in life before his sons are even born. So it is, this is a critical piece of information to understand, especially when you have impartial individuals who are not directly connected to Jose other than work describing him in this manner. So, yes. And we always know that people like this are either, you know, the same to the people who are closest to them or they're worse because they don't think there's anything wrong with their behavior. And you always are going to show more of your true believe when the parents of the offenders, which in this case, the offenders would be Eric and Lyle Menendez, when the parents are, in my opinion, instrumental in creating the monsters they became, we have to go this far back and we have to see, you know, like fruit of the poisonous tree. Where did this start? And do we see a pattern? And do we see maybe why these two men turned out the way they did?

But let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. So by June of 1980, Jose Menendez was in charge of the rental car divisions for both North and Latin America, and he was reaching for the coveted position of president of the company. So Jose was very put out when he did not get that promotion, because even though he was inarguably effective, he was still a man in his 30s, which was considered to be too young to be taken seriously in such a role. Feeling unappreciated, Jose looked for something to reaffirm to himself that he was an unstoppable force, a Greek god. And he began working as an independent consultant for RCA Records, helping them improve and build out their Latin music

division. When his recommendations were helpful, Jose was made VP of Finance for RCA, where he was given the nickname Hertzman, which was probably a lot nicer of a nickname than most of his colleagues wanted to give him. A fellow executive at RCA said, quote, Menendez was not a nice man. He would scream and shout. He became extremely manipulative. He took maximum advantage of everyone around him, end quote. But as usual, Jose's motto was fuck the haters, and he focused on getting his bag. He opened an RCA office in Miami where he began signing up and bringing in Latin acts such as Jose Feliciano and eventually Menudo. Now, from the book, The Menendez Murders, the author writes, quote, Menendez took an obsessive personal interest in the group, which was unusual for the head of a record label.

He spent weeks on tour with Menudo in Brazil and Italy. He hired a tutor to teach the group English. When they came to New York in 1984, Menudo's shows at Italy. He hired a tutor to teach the group English. When they came to New York in 1984, Menudo's shows at Radio City Music Hall quickly sold out. The group later returned and sold out Madison Square Garden, end quote. And we are going to talk more about Menudo throughout this series because this band, which was made up of very young boys, right, like 13, 14-year-old boys, they were very talented. And they were constantly getting switched out because the person, the man who put the band together, he was like, oh, I want,

you know, talented kids who can sing, who can dance, who have that it factor. But when they get a little bit older and they've sort of aged out of being these young, cute little boys, I want to replace them with more young, cute little boys who can sing and dance. And so they were always just these very young boys, 13, 14, preteen. And Jose Menendez was spending a lot of time with them. And he had brought them in initially to RCA and everybody he worked with was like, oh, no, this isn't going to hit. Like, we don't think this is going to translate to the United States. It's not a good idea. But he insisted. He insisted that he had to sign them. And it ended up being a good bargain.

They were very successful. However, a lot of people question, why did Jose Menendez go to bat for Menudo and the boys of Menudo so heavily when every single other executive was telling him, let's pass on this. We don't think it's too much of a risk. Was it because he just believed in his own instincts so much, or was it because he had some ulterior motive? And we are going to talk about that as we get around to that timeline. But as an executive VP at RCA, Jose was making $500,000 a year. That's $500,000 in the 80s, okay? In the 70s, not today. And it seemed that he'd finally built himself into the successful businessman he always knew he would be. While Jose was busy building an empire and accumulating wealth, his wife Kitty gave birth to two sons.

Joseph Lyle Menendez was born on January 10, 1968 at Flatbush Hospital in Brooklyn. And Erika Galen Menendez was born on November 27th, 1971 at St. Barnabas Hospital in Livingston, New Jersey. In 1977, Jose's sister Teresita and her husband Carlos moved to Princeton, New Jersey. And Jose's wife Kitty spent some time with them for a visit. And she absolutely fell in love with the quaint college town. And actually, Lyle Menendez is going to end up attending Princeton University. So after Kitty spent some time in Princeton, she went home to tell her husband, this is where I want to live. This

is where I want to raise our family. At first, the Menendez family rented a house near Carlos and Teresita. And two years later, they built a four-bedroom home in the same area. Not only were they close location-wise to Carlos, Terry, and their four daughters, but not long after this, Jose's other sister Marta, her husband Peter, and their five children relocated from Puerto Rico to Princeton as well. Because of this, Lyle and Eric were able to spend a lot of time visiting family and playing with their cousins. And that was a good thing because it seemed that Jose would only allow his sons to associate with their family members. He did not want them socializing with many other kids their age because he felt it would be a distraction and hold them back from reaching

Jose Menendez level goals. There were other reasons why Jose didn't want his sons hanging out with other kids and we're going to get there. But mainly it was because he thought his sons were too good to hang out with other kids, that these other kids would spoil his sons, taint them, make them lackadaisical, lazy, just basically influence them in the wrong decisions. So they didn't really have friends. But all of these family members, you've got this big family here. You've got all these kids. You've got Jose and his two siblings and their husbands close by. They all hung out all the time. They spent weekends together at one house or the other. They would throw steaks on the grill, go swimming. But the Menendez family was not as shiny and happy as they appeared from the outside. You cannot choose who you're related to. And Lila and Eric ended up being born to a short-tempered, workaholic father with a massive ego and a depressed, self-medicating mother who treated her sons more like accessories that she

wished she could remove when they started to annoy her. Marta's husband, Peter Canto, became close to Kitty Menendez, and he had seen her drink too much and become messy and uncontrollable many, many times. And one day she confided in him that she did have a drinking problem. Peter also didn't think that Kitty was a huge fan of her children. One day when Eric was two and Lyle was five, they were at the mall with their mother and their aunt Marta. The boys started knocking over store displays and then they just ran off. And Marta was concerned when they couldn't locate the two young children, but Kitty told her, don't worry, the boys are going to be fine. Not long after this, a message came over the PA't worry, the boys are going to be fine.

Not long after this, a message came over the PA system asking Mrs. Menendez to report to the security office to pick up her children. And Kitty turned to Marta and said, quote, oh great, now we know where they are so we can keep shopping, end quote. According to Marta, Kitty did not make it to the security office to get Eric and Lyle for almost another hour.

That's an insane story to me to think that basically using the store as babysitters, that's a new one. I've never heard that before. Especially after John Walsh's son, you know, like that was in a shopping area, I believe around the same time, like in the 70s or 80s, if I'm not mistaken.

And he's just taken from a shopping area, you know, and these kids were two and five, two and five, which is insane to me, just like wandering around. And then they have them at the security office and she's like, oh, thank God. Now I can shop in peace and not have to have a slight bit of worry about where my sons are. I'd be so embarrassed to show up there an hour later, dude.

So embarrassed. Yeah, you know, I always am cautious about talking about someone who's no longer with us. And obviously based on the way that they, you know, she, she was killed. Wasn't, wasn't pleasant. So, uh, yeah, but on the surface, just looking at it for what it is, face value, got to be objective, not good parental, uh, not good parental behavior. It's not the way it should be done. And clearly she was, like you said, going through some things and she had divulged that to, to people she was close with, but no excuse. There's still, there still has to be some common sense there. And obviously that, that, that type of behavior, uh, with your with your children, not even being concerned where

they are until someone else that makes you aware of where they are and then going, oh, what a relief. Now I don't have to pick them up for a while. And to think that it was over an hour, that's just crazy. Yeah. Because it's like basic needs. I understand you have an alcohol problem, you're depressed, you have some mental health things going on. You may not have a lot of, your cup may be empty. You may not have a lot of like love or attention or focus to give, but these are basic needs like food, water, safety. You should at least be able to do that even when you're struggling through a very difficult time. And apparently Kitty rarely, if ever, showed affection to her children. And she had a very short fuse that would be triggered for no apparent reason.

Her sister-in-law, Marta Canto, said, quote, She would suddenly get very violent and throw things and bang things and scream at the kids. She would pick them up by the arm, just like Jose used to, and shake them and throw them and send them to their room. Frequently, she called them idiot, stupid, or clumsy after becoming frustrated over seemingly inconsequential things, end quote. When Eric was six, he was in an amusement park with his cousins, but he was scared to go into this large tent. And his cousin, Anna Maria, who was around his same age, she walked in without a problem. And then his mother, Kitty, began to verbally assault her son, telling him he was a

coward and causing him to sob uncontrollably in public. If Lyle and Eric hoped for some sympathy or a break from this abuse with their father, they would be sorely disappointed. Jose had no problem being physically rough with his sons. When Lyle was five, he was playing with Marta's children, while Jose and Peter chatted in the living room. Apparently, Lyle was extra full of it that day. He was hyper, bouncing off the walls.

And when his father told him to stop and Lyle did not immediately obey, Peter Canto said that Jose grabbed Lyle, glared in his eyes, and whispered something fiercely into his ear. Whatever he said must have been terrifying because Lyle wet his pants. And when Jose saw what had happened, he didn't feel bad or apologize or realize he'd gone too far. He became enraged, And he punched his five-year-old son in the chest with a closed fist before dragging him down the hall to his bedroom, throwing him inside and slamming the door. So Peter came to Lyle's defense and he was like, yo, chill out. You don't need to do all this. You can't treat a child like this. And Jose was like, well, if you don't like it, you can leave. This is my house. I do what I

want in my house with my kids and my wife, and you don't have to be here. And Peter Canto said that he grabbed his wife, his kids, and they left within minutes of Jose saying that. Good for him. Yeah. But I mean, also you're leaving and it's like, I would, it would be hard for me to do that because now I'm like, okay, I'm leaving and nobody's here to see what's happening to these kids, you know? Well, you could, could leave and contact someone at that point. Yeah. But this was this but that was not the time to do that. No family members are going to be calling CPS on other family members in the 70s and 80s. When Lyle was seven, he had a very traumatic experience. So he came home from school and he was excited because he had been allowed to take home the classroom bunny.

I guess that they didn't need the classroom bunny anymore. And the teacher was like, who would like to take this bunny home as your pet? And Lyle immediately was like, me, I want that bunny. And he got home with the bunny and he showed it probably to his mother. She was like, get that thing out of here. Your father's never going to let you keep it. I don't want it in my house. Get it out.

But Lyle was kind of hoping that his parents would change their minds. So he hung on to the bunny. He kept it in this little glass aquarium in his room. He fed it. He took care of it. He loved it. But then one day the rabbit went missing. And when Lyle asked where his rabbit had gone to, his father told him to look in the garbage. Lyle did this. And there he was just completely heartbroken and traumatized to find the dead body of his treasured bunny. We know that hurt people hurt people. And those who are abused or pushed around will sometimes or often find others who are smaller and more vulnerable so that they can abuse them and push them around. Especially this happens in children because they don't understand why it's happening to them.

And they're making connections in their brain. This is how you treat people. They're learning. This is how you treat people. They don't understand that it's wrong or bad. They just think that is the way you behave. And it's so sad to think about it. But what happened is Lyle started to become a bully towards his younger brother, Eric. And this behavior was not only supported by Jose, but it was egged on. Jose would stand there and watch and shout as Eric and Lyle fought. And he would say, you know, Lyle, get him here, cut him off at the waist. Or he'd say, Eric, you know, watch your back. He's coming at you. Fight back, Eric. Fight back. Because Eric was smaller, three years younger. And he would just kind of sit there and take it. And his father, instead of coming in and saying, hey, don't hurt your brother, he would say, Eric, get your ass up, fight back. Like, what are you doing? You

coward. You're weak. Get up. And this does remind me a little bit of Aaron Hernandez's father, because remember, Aaron Hernandez's father did the same thing to Aaron and his brother. And a lot of what happened to the Menendez brothers is echoed by what would go on to happen to Aaron Hernandez and his brother at the hands of their father. I also think it's like this, and I don't agree with this, but like this kill or be killed mentality that some of these individuals have, like this natural selection type thing where Jose approached his life as, you know, it's whoever's the best is going to be successful and everyone else is just, is going to get eaten alive. And so he, he adopted that mentality in his own life. So even with his kids or in the animal world, like his cubs, it's like, Hey, listen, whoever the strongest of the two cubs are, that's, who's going to be King. That's, who's going to survive. And nobody's going to go easy on you when you're in a battle for your life, it's kill or be

killed. And if you're, if you're weak, you're going to get taken out. And he didn't make that exception with the people he worked with. And he definitely wasn't going to give his sons a pass. They were going to have to learn the hard way and whoever wanted it more, that's who was going to be successful. And the other person, they would be thrown in the trash, just like the bunny. I do have a question for you about the bunny because I think it's significant and maybe you don't even know the answer, but are we to assume that the bunny was killed by Jose or were we to assume that the bunny maybe died and then they just disposed of it without telling him or, you know, which one is it? The bunny was killed by Jose. Okay. I mean, that says a lot about him. Reportedly, yes.

Reportedly. Obviously. It does say a lot about him because we're talking about the psychology behind that and how we can associate that with other individuals who are capable of killing small, innocent animals and what they eventually do in the future or what they've already been doing, right? That's how sometimes serial killers start. So it does give

you a little bit of insight into the psychology of Jose Menendez. Now, I'm not saying that that's the direction he was going, or we don't even know for sure if he did kill the bunny, but if we did, and that is what occurred, it says a lot about him from a mental standpoint, the ability to kill a harmless animal like that, as opposed to just giving it away. Well, I mean, it speaks to a lack of empathy. Oh yeah. I mean, at your very base level,

that's, it's a lack of empathy for, for living creatures. Like you also got to ask the other big question. Was there gratification in it? We don't know. I think that the gratification came from taking something away from his son that his son valued.

Yeah. I think there was gratification. I don't know if he got gratification from killing that animal, but I guarantee you he got gratification from taking something away from Lyle that Lyle valued and really wanted badly. Think about what you're saying right now. And that's what we're talking about here. When we think about serial killers, and again, not comparing him to a serial killer at this point, but what I'm saying is there are serial killers out there or killers in general who get gratification from watching the victim's family members and friends struggle with that loss. I'm going to talk about Rex Huriman, again, innocent until proven guilty

in the court of law, but it's alleged that he would contact the victim's family members and tell them where the body was. Say he was driving by the person because he wanted to elicit a specific emotion because allegedly that's what he got gratification from by tormenting them by watching and viewing the trauma that he had created through his actions. And you're saying here that maybe there was some enjoyment watching Lyle look at his bunny in the trash, realizing that he, Jose, was the one who created that. If that's all true, that's some scary shit. Yeah, because Jose could have said, oh, your bunny went to a farm with other bunnies or your bunny's parents came back and took him and now he's happy.

But instead he was like, I need you to see what I did to your animal. Yeah. So and even outside of serial killers, like psychopaths enjoy causing people pain and harm. Like it's just this lack of empathy. It's this I'm going to get some kind of reaction from you. And I don't care if it's a good reaction or a bad reaction. I don't care if you love me or hate me as long as you feel strongly about me. And as long as you know, I have the power to make you feel whatever I want you to feel. It's very like, you know, it's psychotic kind of thing, especially when it's your own child.

Agreed. And I just want to make sure everyone knows we're not sitting here in any way, shape or form victim blaming. Two things can be true. You can have a situation where the death of another is wrong. And yet maybe in some circumstances, the person that was killed was not a good person. So we're going through it objectively and we're going through it chronologically. So right now we're discussing Jose and Kitty and their relationship with their children. And we will be discussing Lyle and Eric as we continue on in their actions and their decisions. So we're just going through it. Yes, because they're the children. They're the children

of these people. Obviously, we know that just from being born to these people and raised by these people, Eric and Lyle aren't going to be, you know, shiny examples of morality. Based on what they're looking up to every day, what they're being, you know, who they're being taught by. So, no, it's good to point it out. I just want to make sure we're, you know, we're not sitting here saying, oh, well, you know, it's episode one, it's part one of this and we're already saying they deserved it. Exactly. That's not what we're saying. We're just going through the context, the details, the gray areas that, you know, add complexity to a human situation.

100%. Well said. So, well, Lyle would be beating up on Eric, and Eric would be getting screamed at to defend himself and stop being so weak. And Jose's brother-in-law, Carlos Basalt, he would tell Jose, this is toxic. This is bad. You shouldn't be pitting your sons against each other. But Jose simply stated it was good for Eric. He had to learn to fight back. He had to learn to defend himself. He had to learn to be strong. And at first, Kitty did try to put a stop to it.

But Jose would bark at her. Get back. Don't get involved. Shut your mouth. This did have an effect on the boys. And we're going to talk about that after we take our next break. So reportedly, Jose berated his wife in front of their sons. And eventually, Eric and Lyle began to almost mirror his behavior, becoming dismissive and disrespectful to their mother, which, I mean, what did you expect to happen?

And when Carlos Basalt talked to Jose about this, he was like, why don't you step in and teach Eric and Lyle to be nicer and kinder to their mother? And once again, Jose said, why would I do that? She's a woman and they're men. And it's good for my sons to know that they're the men of the house and they're in control and they are, you know, dominant. Now, here is Eric and then Lyle talking about some of their childhood memories of their mother, Kitty. She would compare me to Lyle. I did a lot of things for her. I liked doing things for her. I would vacuum the floor. I would do the dishes.

So she would say these things to me because I knew she would when I did that. And she just seemed to care more about me than Lyle. Now, you said she said things like you were a better son than Lyle? Yes. Just what she would say to him him she would say similar things to me but just so often to Lyle all the time she would blame him for things that he didn't do to dad because she didn't want to get in trouble as she would well she did that to me, but she, just the way she treated Lyle, I knew

that she didn't like Lyle. Stepped on a needle and I just heard him cry out and I was in the hallway or right next to my room and I came in and I saw the needle sticking out of both sides of his big toe and it really scared me. How was he behaving? He was crying and screaming. And so I ran and got Mom, and she was on the phone, and this time I didn't care. I was just pulling on her arm, asking her to come because Lyle was in pain,

and Lyle had a needle in his foot, and she pushed me away, and she said, I'll be there in a minute. And you told her that Lyle had a needle in his foot? Yes. And did she come right away? No. And you told her that Lyle had a needle in his foot? Yes. And did she come right away? No. And did you have to go back again? Yes, I was begging for her to come because Lyle wasn't moving.

He had his foot right in the air. I was young. I was like five. And what happened? He got in the car, and he was playing around with the driving wheel and I guess put the gear shift on neutral and the car started going backwards. Where was the car? In the driveway. And so it started to move?

Yeah, it started to roll backwards. And what did you do? I, uh, I ran in the house to get mom and say, Lyle's in the car, the car's rolling down the hill, because it was a slanted driveway. And she said, okay, okay, I'll be there in a minute. What was she doing? She was on the phone. And was she there in a minute? She made it just before the car ran over the mailbox. It took her a little while, I was surprised.

Do you have something in particular that stands out in your mind that's a good memory of your mother? I remember Christmases. She was always up, it seemed, and she would be up when I got up, and she would take us down to open the presents, even though my dad would sleep in. So we got to do that, and that was usually a nice day. And I remember her taking care of the birds that would hit the window. And especially in Muncie, the birds would hit the window and be kind of like hurt or wounded in some way. She would put them in a special cage she had for birds that did that. She was just amazing with the birds.

I remember watching. Did you love your mom and dad? Yes. And did your mother ever express any resentment? Oh, yes, many, many times. What would she say? She would say many things. She would say that I ruined her life,

and she would explain to me why and how I ruined her life. What would she tell you about why and how you ruined her life? Well, if she wasn't in a tantrum and she was just speaking normally, she would just explain all the things that she could have been, an actress, broadcasting. I learned about her aspirations with disappointments of not being a child actress and wanting to go on in some acting or broadcasting sense. And she told me that she had a job in New York to be a hostess at a restaurant that she said she could make almost $50,000 a year.

And that then suddenly she had gotten pregnant, that she had not wanted to get pregnant that my dad had then forced her while gave her an ultimatum either you leave or or you stay home with my son and quit and so she chose to stay home and essentially her life was pretty much ruined from that point on but then we would have more discussions about how much money was being spent on my tennis, all my dad's time on my tennis, who cares. And then I would hear about the lessons she couldn't have, the things that she couldn't have. And then there would be other times when she was in a tantrum. Then it would just come out very, you know, in a rage.

What would come out in a rage? She would be throwing things and screaming and flailing and trying to hit you and saying that you're a bastard. And she cursed a lot. screaming and flailing and wanting and trying to hit you and saying you're a bastard and she cursed a lot and uh then wait till your dad gets home i'll tell him the things that you didn't do today and and i wish you were never born and why can't you be like your brother and what's the matter with you and then i would try to say something she would say shut up i don't want to hear it no you're stupid I hate you how old were you when you heard things like I wish you were never born so

so you know not considering what we're here and why we're here talking about the menendez brothers it is very difficult as a parent to watch that to realize that these they're older men now but you know in this video how old are they in this video we're looking at? So when the murders happened, Eric was, I think, 18 or 19 and Lyle was 21. And the trials happened a few years later. So they're probably both in their early 20s at this point. Early 20s. So they're young men. But to think about the fact that they're in their early 20s and the vivid memory that they have of these incidences and how much it affected them. Yeah. It clearly affects them. Right. Like, I don't think you can even,

I don't think you can even pretend that like you have to be an excellent actor to just the catches and the, and especially Lyle's voice. Like he has a hard time saying things sometimes like it's true emotion. Well, there's a lack of confidence that you can just tell, like there's probably a lot of times where he's questioned, like if she was right,

you know, maybe he would. Exactly. Yeah. You can see that there's a lot going lot of times where he's questioned like if she was right, you know, maybe he would. Exactly. So you can see that there's a lot going through his mind as he's just kind of reminiscing about the experiences that he had. Let me ask you this. Watching that video, obviously it's disheartening, but what's the general consensus from the public as far as the Menendez brothers, as far as their testimony at trial, did most people believe them? Did they think like, this video that we just watched here, if I were to take a poll, are most people saying that was an act based on what other things we heard? This is

all for show. I mean, like I said, when they went on trial, it was a completely different cultural landscape. So they got made fun of basically uh really yeah they were on snl skits like they were they were making jokes on um nighttime television you know like the late night shows and stuff they were making jokes it was as far as their testimony like things like this their testimony that everybody kind of thought like oh how convenient like nobody's ever heard anything about these two being abusive before and now all of a sudden you know you've got a convenient uh justification yeah not even an alibi you're right justification for it they yeah they were not believed back then but now there are people i mean i don't know i haven't i'm not like i don't have my finger on the pulse of what people think about the menendez brothers

which is kind of good so i can get a oh we read. We're going to hear from you guys. That's for sure. I believe him. I definitely believe him. I don't think that it's an act. I don't think you could act like that if there wasn't something true and real behind it. Could they be exaggerating? Maybe. I don't know. But there's some hurt there. And what you'll also see in especially Lyle's testimony is this juxtaposition, this like battling thing inside of him. I love my parents, but I hate my parents. I loved my parents, but I was afraid of them, especially with his father. He knew the way he was treated wasn't right. He knew that he didn't feel good about it, but it's almost like he came to feel that he deserved it and that his father was doing it because he loved him. So it was psychologically, that's what happens with children. And that's why they grow up to, like you said, have a lack of confidence, low self-esteem. They feel the need. You'll see that Lyle and Eric would eventually feel the need to drive expensive sports cars, wear Rolexes. It's this whole like I need to have this exterior image of me be one that I can respect because inside I don't respect myself and I need other

people to. I don't want them to see the person who I am, which is scared and vulnerable and hurt and traumatized. So they would project this image of having it all together and, you know, be very cocky and kind of just emulating their father. But inside they didn't have that substance. Their father stole that from them. So, yeah, as far without even going too deep into the psychology behind it, just on the surface, obviously these two individuals committed this crime together. So there could have been some pre-planning, but just listening to what they have to say, there is some corroborating statements there as far as how they were treated, how their parents acted toward them. So it does

appear to give it some validity and some credence there. So those are things to consider now. If you're on the other side of this, you could say, yeah, when they're thinking about how they're going to get their parents' money, they had to come up with an excuse in case it came back to them. And this is some of the things they maybe talked about prior to it. But I'll say this, if you have two kids and their parents have money, if they love their parents and their parents were great to them, is it still possible? Sure. But there's probably still something underneath that that says to these kids, two things can be true. They could have wanted the money and also disliked

their parents because of the way they treated them. Yes, I agree. I completely agree. Right. It didn't have to be one motive or the other. It would be a combination. Still wrong. Yeah. It would almost feel like, OK, you stole my life from me. Like, I don't even have an identity. I don't know who I am. I when I when I hear when I think about myself in my head, it's your voice that I hear. I'm messed up and you are successful and happy and have all this money and after what you did to me. And so I am going to kill you and then I'm going to spend your money kind of thing, you know? You could be looking at a situation where it's a motive and a justification. The motive may have been financial in nature, but the justification for the act could have been the preexisting issues that occurred throughout their life. And now this was their way of explaining to themselves, at least,

hey, this is why we're doing this. This is okay because of this. And here's the ironic part, right? Jose raised his sons to- Survival of the fittest. Survival of the fittest. And well, if you raise your kids to behave as if they're living in the jungle and have to fight for their lives and every single thing they get, would you not think that that would turn on you eventually one day? Could definitely come back to bite you. Yeah. Not the best idea. It's better to raise your kids to be, I don't know, kind, thoughtful,

emotionally intelligent, and they'll be successful in life. Even if they're not successful in business, they'll be successful in life if they are all those things. They'll be happy. But in this situation, you created basically like a lion's pride, you know, where brother fights brother for dominance, son fights father for dominance. Son fights father for dominance. And it came back. And it came back on Jose because those kids were taught that they had to be strong and they had to take what they wanted by violence if necessary. We're going to take our last break and then we'll be back. So outside of work, the only other thing Jose Menendez seemed to really care about was Lyle and Eric's academic and sports achievements. From a very young age, Jose told the boys that they were going to grow up to be professional athletes and rich businessmen like he was.

He had started the boys in swimming, hoping they would follow in the footsteps of their grandmother. And, you know, she was an Olympic swimmer and also Jose himself, who got a scholarship for swimming. 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 did you want to make him happy?

So he would love me. What's the first sport you remember getting involved in on an organized basis? Swimming. How old were you when you started swimming? I think four years old. And was this just a matter of going to the pool and swimming for fun or was this more organized? We had a coach and my mom would take us

and in the winters we would go indoors and practice with the older kids. Or actually that was just me at that point, eventually my brother and I. And is this something where you had a half hour lesson every week or was it more frequent than that? In the summer it was every day and in the spring probably almost every day. But in the winter it was whenever the classes were, the practices were just like three times a week. And then sometimes my dad would take me on his own.

Now, when your dad would take you on his own, was it the same type of training session that you'd have with swimming teachers, or was it different? It was very different, because swimming, basically the coach just is calling out the laps or the kind of things that you should do and he might occasionally come over and help someone that's having a problem with a particular stroke or something of that sort.

With my dad, it was very uh it was one-on-one and he'd stay in the pool with me and swim next to me and sometimes we would play or it would just be him and I for usually they gave you an hour it was like hour free time swimming and I would take that time to train with my dad. And were these good times for you or bad times? Sometimes it was good. And sometimes it was bad? And what was it like when it was bad? Well, I didn't really like the swimming. And sometimes he was rough with the swimming. What do you mean he was rough with the swimming?

He was, it was like they were just drills, and I would swim laps, and sometimes he would just yank me out of the water by my hair and he would shake you and he would, he took it very, very seriously. He had, you know, he was training to be an Olympic swimmer at one point and so he had all kinds of different methods and how to expand your lungs and how long I should be able to hold my breath. And we practiced him holding me under the water, how long I could take it. What do you mean how long you could take it? Would he say, I'm going to hold you under for 30 seconds and then you go under?

Or what would that be like? We would go under and I would fight him to get air, and then he would give me air. And we would keep doing that, and I would be able to do it less and less time. It was very rough. What do you mean you would fight him to get air? I would just push away from him or pinch him or do whatever I could, hit him underwater. My dad was unaffected by all that, so that's what he wanted me to do. He wanted me to fight to get air so that I could go beyond what I would normally just take

if he said stay underwater as long as you could. And this would expand my lungs. And there were other things that made it for me rough. And I just was so nervous about swimming. It wasn't just my dad either. Just the practices themselves made me very nervous. The older kids would be, the guy would be blowing whistles and he would have to dive in. And I didn't like the water. It was always very cold.

And it was, for some reason, I didn't like it. When your dad would hold you under and make you fight to get air, how would you feel when you finally got up to the surface? Just relieved to get air, how would you feel when you finally got up to the surface? Just relieved to get air. Would you physically have any effects? I would be crying. This would be very rough, like I said. What did your dad do when you'd come up crying? Take a short break. We usually wait 30 seconds or so. Then do it again. And how many times would you do these lung expanding exercises?

That way we wouldn't do it too many times. And we would try to do it a couple times a week. And then we would test a couple times a week if I could go farther like swim a whole lap underwater and then come back and how far I would get. And we would try to go farther. And what ages were you when these exercises were going on? I'm not sure, but by like, between like six and, till about 10, I would say, maybe a little bit longer. And do you have any other memories of swimming that are painful for you? I really, the whole thing was very bad for me.

And mostly I remember pleading with my mother not to take me, stalling so I would be late, incredible stomach aches, I think from the nerves where I would be nauseous and I would vomit. What would your mom say when you'd ask her to not make you go? She would just say get ready let's go and she would always threaten me with telling my dad. But when it came to the swimming, I was pretty resistant. I didn't seem to care as much as I did normally. I was pretty crazed about the swimming.

It made me so nauseous and nervous. The drilling, the intensity, the underwater stuff was very hard for me. I remember purposely swimming into the wall in practice so that I would be injured so that the coach would say okay you can sit in the locker room and miss the afternoon sessions. I would do all kinds of things to anything to get out of it. Was there any particular reason that swimming was so important? You said your father had trained? Well, my grandmother, I had heard was a champion swimmer. Even my dad's sisters, who were less into sports, were very good swimmers.

And he was training to be an Olympic swimmer at the time that he had to leave Cuba. And he felt he could have gone all the way. And at least in the beginning, he felt that I could. And then that just clearly wasn't going to be. Now, as you heard Lyle testify to, he hated swimming. He sounded like he had a phobia of it, honestly, but he really liked playing soccer. However, something fun like an athletic activity for a kid would become a way for Jose Menendez to further control, scare, humiliate, and subjugate his sons. Did you like soccer?

I really like soccer. Was your dad as involved in your soccer playing as he was in your swimming? Yes. And what kind of involvement did you have, or did he have with your soccer? Just coming to the games, or was he more involved in that? No, my dad was there whenever I played soccer, which we usually reserved for when he was there because it was technical for him. He had a certain way he wanted me to play and didn't feel it was productive for me just to be kicking a ball around when he wasn't there.

So soccer, I waited until he was around. Now when you were playing soccer I presume there was a coach? Not when I was five but eventually there was like by the time I was seven I would think. And once you were on an organized team with a coach did your dad's involvement stop? No. Well How would your dad behave when you were playing organized soccer? In practices, he would be very involved and the coaches would allow that. Pretty much it would be like a private lesson with him and then the team was playing also. And you know, he would be yelling things from the sidelines.

Sometimes he would come out and grab me and take me off the field and talk to me and put me back in, and the coaches would pretty much ignore him, both of us, and we would play. And I was getting a lot of extra training, and so I was at a level where it seemed like that was why the coaches would be tolerating that because I would be one of the better players when the game started and a big help to the team. So they basically just let my dad do what he wanted to do. Did you get to be friends with the other kids on the team so they basically just let my dad do what he wanted to do. Did you get to be friends with the other kids on the team?

No, not really. Why not? I just didn't spend any time with them and my dad didn't want that. Why not? It's just part of his philosophy. If I started becoming friendly with these other players, I wouldn't be competitive. If your team lost, would they all get together and go to the pizza parlor afterwards, even though they lost? They would.

Did you get to go? No. What was your dad's philosophy about that? He was very belittling of the coach for allowing the players to be going to pizza parlors to hang out after a loss. And he believed all through sports that the people that win are the ones that hate losing and the idea that there would be smiles on kids faces after they lost the game was really he's just outrageous to him and if if i even went near anybody or you know i had to look and would purposely look pretty devastated after matches pretty similar to that picture.

And my dad would be satisfied because he would be very angry. Did your dad take losing a soccer game when you're eight years old as seriously? It was very serious to him. Why? Well, partly because what I said before, he had his own dreams, and he wanted me to achieve those. And because I was the most important thing in his life. And what I did was serious.

Why were you the most important thing in his life? I don't know. That's just the way it was. Did it have something to do with your place in the family? Was your brother as important to him as you were? No. My brother was unimportant. How could you tell that? I pretty much believed in... Well, I did believe that the first born was the one that

carried the line. I carried my dad and his dad and his dad and his dad's first name, Joseph or Jose. And that was really all he cared about. And to some degree, I felt that was similar feelings from my grandparents and everybody around. The focus seemed to be on me. That might be partly because Jose, I mean, my dad's focus was on me. But I'm not really sure why else. So you got a lot more attention than your brother, is that right?

Well, I had his complete attention, and I don't think my brother... I didn't even think about him. My brother really didn't even exist for me until later in life. I don't think either of us thought about Eric too much. So he was just ignored? He was not completely ignored. Dad would interact with him and be harsh with him at times, play with him at times in ways that he didn't with me.

Just didn't seem to be very concerned with what was happening with Eric. If he was in a bad mood, he might slap Eric or push Eric away. If he was in a good mood, he might hang out with Eric. But it was different. Like I had to be doing something. I was achieving something or something of importance. And it was very different. So you had more attention? Would you say there were more expectations of you also? Definitely. Yeah, so I think it's interesting because we heard Eric mention earlier that he thought he was his mother's favorite.

And now we have Lyle kind of making it seem like he was Jose's favorite and maybe everybody else. So it seemed like Eric really only had Kitty in his corner. And that could be because Kitty looked at Lyle as the first child who kind of made her become a mother and took away her opportunity to have the future she wanted. And then Eric came along and it was like, well, I already have one kid. It's not like Eric's doing any more damage than already having one kid. It's not preventing me from reaching my dreams any more than having one kid. So it's not as bad. There's not as much resentment. But yeah, it's strange that Jose would focus only on his elder son as if his son Eric didn't also carry his blood and his

name. You know, you'd think you want both of your sons or any of your children to be successful and happy and have the same, you know, advantages in life. But this happens once again in families where there's a narcissistic parent, they will triangulate the children against each other. And Eric kind of made it seem like that too. When he was talking earlier, he was saying like, oh, she would say things about Lyle to me. And then I would find out later she was saying these same kinds of things to Lyle or to me about Lyle and, you know, things like that. Like they triangulate, they try to turn their kids against each other because they use their children as like little allies. And it's very, it's obviously very problematic, very damaging. And what it tends to create is more narcissists or it can cause substance abuse issues in kids as they grow older. It can cause borderline things like that because there's a fracture inside of you when you don't understand why one of your siblings is being treated well and you're not or why one of your siblings is getting more more

attention more advantages more opportunities but you're not you start to feel worthless so the sibling who was basically the golden child is what it's called in a narcissistic family dynamic they end up becoming narcissistic as well because they're basically told that like, you know, everything they do is good and they're the ones that are there to carry on the torch. And the other child ends up having self-esteem issues, confidence issues, can't get into drugs, alcohol, finds themselves coping with addiction, things like that. So it's just problematic all around. Yeah, I found Lyle's description of how his father may have perceived him as opposed to his brother Eric, as far as him being the main person in the bloodline, being the first child, and that because not only did he carry the same last name, but also the same first name as not

only Jose, but also his father, right? So Lyle's grandfather, there was an investment in him. He was a couple years older than Eric. He had been around for a while and for a short period of time, he was the only child. And so they had already taken a vested interest in him and his future and what he was going to accomplish and how he was going to carry on the name of Jose Menendez. So when Eric comes along, he's just an after effect. He just happened. Maybe he wasn't even planned. Who knows? But he's there. And Jose clearly decided, hey, listen, I've already started with Jose Jr. or AKA Lyle. That's where my money's going to be. That's who I think is going to be the breadwinner out of the two. And if you look at it, I haven't seen an overall picture of them, but it looks like

just from the court footage, that's my first time seeing them really that for that long period of time it looks like even Lyle's a bigger guy Eric appears to be a little bit smaller a little skinnier a little meeker yeah a little more like the kind of the runt of the family in a situation maybe this was again something that Jose Sr. saw and kind of that's why he invested more time into Lyle as opposed to Eric. But it was interesting that, again, we're looking at this many years later and what we're seeing and we're describing it almost like an animalistic type thing where it's natural selection. It's the pride and which child or which cub is going to be the strongest. They're going to go on to be king of the pride

after the father expires. Menendez brothers were seeing it the same way. They're describing it in real time to an attorney. That's how they were viewing it. And that's how they perceived his behavior toward them. So it does appear that that was the case. And it kind of reminds me of like the old medieval days, like I think they call it primogeniture, where the eldest son takes over for the king, right? And the firstborn son would be lauded and just showered with whatever he needed to get his leadership skills in line. And the second son would go into the church and kind of almost be left to the mother, like, well, we don't care about you. You're not going to be king. So you're just the spare.

You're a spare. It's we got the heir and we've got the spare. And Eric was the spare. And as many people, I mean, look at what happened to Prince Harry over here. Dude's a mess. As many people who have been designated. Prince Harry slander. Wow.

Just threw it out there and kept rolling. He's a mess, man. Did you read his book? I mean, I didn't, but I heard some passages of it. I was like, damn, he's got some daddy issues, you know? And that's why Harry was always closer to his mother. It's this pattern of seeking the other parent because you're not getting what you need from your male parent as a son. And what I think we see here is it causes, you know, a feeling of inadequacy that lasts for a long time. And I mean, if we want to go even further, Henry VIII was the same because Henry VIII wasn't the first son. His brother Arthur was, but then his brother Arthur died and then Henry VIII became the first son. And he was like, oh, this is way better than what I

was dealing with before, right? The heir and the spare. And the spare is always going to get, you know, like I said, tucked away like a spare tire. We'll bring you out if we need you. But we don't need you right now. So we don't even need to know you exist. And it's got to be hard for a kid. Can't imagine not be difficult. Eventually, Jose decided that soccer was too blue collar for his sons,

and he directed them towards tennis, which he considered to be a more elite sport. As it turned out, both Lyle and Eric ended up having a natural talent for tennis. And even without coaching, they were innately very good. But once again, tennis was not a fun activity for them. It would become their lives and something they needed to excel at or risk the wrath of their father. Jose had specific sets of achievements he expected his sons to reach. He wanted them to become national tennis champions. They would attend Ivy League colleges. They would be successful just like him. And once again, if you look at Eric and Lyle, Lyle goes to Princeton. Eric does not go to an Ivy League college. He ends up going to a state school, I believe, in L.A. So we see again that, yes, you guys are going to go to Ivy League colleges, but it's fine if just Lyle does.

You know, Eric, you do what you got to do. And they were expected to reach these goals by any means necessary. So Jose hired private coaches. He had a tennis court installed in their backyard. He even started taking lessons himself so that he could be really good and he could coach the boys at home when the coaches weren't around any time of the day or night when you would be practicing would your father be there participating in your practices in tennis yes not every time but most of the time my dad was there anytime he could be there he would be there and when you were playing in tournaments, was your father there? Yes. He would fly in and a lot of times I remember I would start the first couple points and then I'd see my dad show up in a business suit, having just arrived. Would you be glad to see him?

Yes. Did he make it more fun for you to be in tournaments? No. Why not? Well, whenever my dad was around, it was very heavy pressure, and I preferred to be just with the coach. But for some reason when I was away from my dad, I had trouble playing. And so I remember the semifinals of one big championship tournament with a rival that I had beaten earlier in the spring in front of my dad easily. This was a big match, there were like 50 people watching and I lost 6-0, 6-0. And my coach

looked at me like, oh my God, how are we going to tell your dad? And he was like pale. And I was, sometimes I just couldn't play if my dad was not there. And I don't know, sometimes it was the nerves of just having to explain to him the match. What do you mean, explain to him the match? If your father wasn't there, would you have to tell him about the match? Every game, exactly how the match progressed. Now, when you say exactly how the match progressed, would you call your father at work or see him when he got home?

How would you tell him? I'd call him immediately. He'd want to know immediately. So would he be at work? No, I guess at tournaments he was mostly at work. But I'd call him after practices, and I would be playing late. He would get home and expect a call from either the coach or from me. Or we'd reach him at the office. His secretary would always say, he's out to lunch, he's busy.

As soon as he found out it was my tennis coach, oh, he just walked in. And then we'd, he'd want everything, you know, exactly the temperament. Tell me, tell me what you would tell him. He'd talk to the coach first, and I could hear my coach saying, you know, he did real well. I know it was a close match, depending on whatever happened, just describe the match kind of. And then he'd say, you know, your father wants to talk to you.

And Dad would ask me to have the coach leave the room so he could talk to me in private. And he would say, tell me what happened. You know, I heard this is what happened. I want to know why did this happen this way. As far as giving examples, like he would say, you know, you elected to serve first. And I'd say yes. I'd say, okay, do you go through the first three games like we arranged? Because he would have like exactly what I was supposed to do for the first almost 25 points,

where I would just have a set strategy. Sometimes it would go off during the point, but pretty much I would either serve and volley to the deuce court, stay back on the add court, and if it was 30 all, he'd have different strategies. And I'd explain to him how I followed those strategies, and he'd want to know why they didn't work out. And I'd do my best to explain in a way that didn't admit that my backhand was off or that I wasn't concentrating or things like that.

Now would these be conversations that would last two or three minutes or how long would you be explaining in detail what happened? An hour and a half. About an hour and a half, because we'd also then have to go into what was happening tomorrow. And he'd want to know exactly what I ate that day. Maybe it was the food that affected the match. And I would write out what I ate every time I was away from him so we could chart whether only bananas and so on in the morning seemed to be a winning percentage and so on.

And I actually purchased a computer at one point that you could plug all these things in and it would give you the percentages of what happened when you ate this or when you tried this strategy or how many unforced errors. Very, very technical with my dad. So it's really fascinating to hear this because although not to this extreme, I coach my daughters and I'm a softball coach for one of them. And we've come a long way. I just, it made me think of it as I was watching this particular clip, I just took like a three hour course. And it's a very involved course where as a coach now, it's an awareness of abuse course for coaches. That's verbal and physical abuse where

you as coaches now have to go through this practice through USA baseball or softball and pass this course to be aware of these types of behaviors that you could see during your interactions with not only the players, but also the parents. And I think a lot of people can relate to this, maybe not to this extreme where you may have had a parent who was very involved in your extracurricular activities, whether that was sports or theater or whatever it was, whatever they wanted you to be good at, dance, things of those natures. So it's not a super uncommon thing to have parents take a personal interest. I mean, we've all seen Dance Moms. They go hard, man. Exactly. Shout out Dance Moms. My kids freaking love that show. But unfortunately, shout out

Abby. But the fact that I know her name tells you how much we're watching it. But yes, so as we see that sometimes where we have to do our job as coaches to politely separate the two so that the coaches aren't on the field with the kids while we're trying to teach them. And it just seems like Jose was a different level, right? Like not only was it at the game or at the practice, but like Lyle was describing, it was at home where he had to give a play-by-play just so Jose Sr. could analyze every single volley, every single serve when he couldn't make it. So there is a healthy level where you want parental involvement. You want them to support their kids.

You want them to see them do well. But there is an unhealthy level. And that appears to be the case here. Clearly, that was the case here. Well, because this isn't support, right? This is a communication to your children. If you fail, if you lose, if you're not perfect, you're not worthy. The only time you're worthy is if you win.

And I'm not even going to tell you you're good then because that's just what you should be doing. So it really does remind me of Aaron Hernandez because, once again, that's what his father did to him. And it was a very clear signal of this is what you're here to do and nothing else is acceptable. And having been in an abusive relationship, I understand because what Lyle said really stuck out to me. He said, having my father there didn't necessarily make me feel better, but I sometimes found it hard to play well if he wasn't there. And this is a trauma bond, a codependent enmeshment with somebody who is your abuser, but also the person that you get validation from. So sometimes when they're not around, because you're so used to being pressured and because you're so used to having certain

circumstances for your behavior. And when that's not there, you feel almost lost. Even though you have more peace, even though you aren't being bullied, you don't know how to function in this different landscape because you're so used to what you live through. And Lyle said that when he was playing soccer, after every game, they would have to come in, drop their soccer bag before they even take their uniforms off. Jose is over there. He's got the tapes up and he's like, all right, let's see what you did wrong. All right.

Your knee was bent here. That was wrong. Let's see what you did wrong. And this would go on for hours after hours of practice and games. So it was very intense for children. Jose wasn't the type to say, hey, listen, as long as you're having fun, that's all that matters. That phrase never came out of his mouth. Never.

Because if Lyle and Eric lost, there'd be hell to pay. Even the coaches said Jose would never say anything in public. You know, he would taunt his kids while they were running. Like once, I think it was Eric had twisted his ankle and he was having a hard time running and Jose was on the sidelines and he was like, oh, the baby can't run. Oh, little baby, you hurt your ankle. And eventually I think Eric turned around and he was like, shut up. And Jose grabbed a ball and threw it at his head in front of everybody. So there's times when Jose's mask will slip. You can't challenge somebody like Jose. You can't embarrass them in public. They can embarrass you in public. You cannot embarrass

them in public. But overall, it just felt like if they lost, they were screwed. If they won, there was still no show of pride from Jose. Losing was unacceptable. Winning was just something you should naturally be doing. And why would you need praise for doing what you should already be doing? Would your dad talk to you about what your performance had been? Yes. And was it supportive, like, you did a great thing today, or I'm really proud of you, or what would be the tone of those conversations? No, he didn't believe in that. We worked on different aspects of the game, what I

could have done. There was always things that I could have done much better. Depends if we won or lost. If we had won, if I'd scored a goal or so and usually in these games I would score a goal or do something significant probably. And we would just focus on the other things that I should have done better. It wouldn't be so bad. You said your dad didn't believe in things like that when I asked you if he said complimentary things. What do you mean he didn't believe in things like that? He just didn't believe in things like that? He just didn't believe in praise.

He just felt that you just have to keep going to the next level of play so we could get to where we wanted to go. And that wasn't going to happen with wasting time, and patting ourselves on the back, and just losing our focus on what we had as a goal. And so I never looked for praise. Did you feel like there was a lot of pressure to live up to your dad's expectations? Tremendous pressure.

Did you think you could ever meet his expectations? No. And I don't think he felt I could either. At one point, were you the number one player in the Middle States Tennis Association? Yes. Now, what is the Middle States Tennis Association? What area does that cover? That's the five states, most of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Delaware. And how old were you when

you were number one in that area? I was 17, I think, my first year of the 18 and unders. So everybody eligible to play in that would have been 18 or younger. Right. And you were 17 when you won. Right. Do you remember, was your dad proud of you? Had you finally done enough? He was proud of me, but by the time I could get to be number one,

we were thinking nationally, and nationally I was the time I could get to be number one, we were thinking nationally, and nationally I was not where he wanted me to be. So we didn't really worry about the five states thing. We concentrated on the nation, what the other players were doing. I was having trouble nationally, and that was always on his mind. So this wasn't a great moment for you then? I mean, making number one ranking in the Middle States Tennis Association was not that important. Did it seem to be important? I mean, did your dad seem to be real happy about this? Um, he really didn't say much about it.

It just happened. The rankings came up. I noticed I was number one. But again, we were thinking nationally. It was like, so what? And that was an upsetting year because we had lost again family of the year, tennis for New Jersey, to a family called the Lesley's and my dad was pissed and my mother called in and you know to complain and the whole

thing because my brother had a very good year that year also but you know we lost that so he was he was very upset basically was upset with my brother for not having been number one also which would have clinched it and he was like five or something four or five so your brother was number four or five if he'd been number one would have clinched it mean you would have gotten the tennis family of the year right my big takeaway from that clip is i think what i think most people probably took away from it and it's that everything he's referring to as far as his sport goals his ambitions he's describing it as we it's never i it's always we weren't focused on that we wanted to get here

this is what this is where we wanted to be we were were focused on nationals. That right there is a red flag. That's a sign. Because it seems to me that maybe Lyle wasn't even that enthused about playing tennis. Like, yeah, I think he enjoyed it. Like, he liked the competition, whatever. But Jose took away the fun of it for him. So for him, it was more so just trying to please his father and gain his love. But everything they did together was Jose Sr. living vicariously through Lyle, trying

to make Lyle the best player possible so that his successes were Jose's successes as well. Because let's be honest, he was a good athlete, Jose Sr. Tried to be an Olympian, but the key word there is tried. He wasn't. He wasn't as successful as his mother, who was a five-time gold medal winner. I think indirectly, and I see this a lot, y'all have a parent who was a good athlete, but not great, and therefore is trying to accomplish what he couldn't or she couldn't through their children. And that might be a that would probably be a tough pill for Jose to hear and swallow. But that's that's how I'm viewing it, where because of Jose senior shortcomings, he was trying on their kids. And then it becomes this unit thing like this is what you're doing for the family. I don't care what you want to do. What you as an independent person, as a singular person wants to do. It's a we. There's no I in team kind of thing, you know, and so the kids, their identities get lost because they've never had to think about

what they wanted because they were told what they wanted. They were told what they were going to do. And that's why he speaks like that. And I agree with you. And great picking up on that. It's very telling and does suggest that there was a lot of abuse and control happening. We do have to give Jose Menendez credit, though, because not only was he able to juggle being a high-powered music executive and a full-time sidelines coach for his sons, but he was also juggling a lady or two or three or four on the side. On top of traveling several weeks out of the year, Jose began choosing to sleep at the RCA suite, which is in the Waldorf Astoria, at night instead of going home. And this was right around the time that Kitty started to believe that her husband was cheating, since he no longer paid attention to her or had time for her. She confessed her fears to her sister-in-law, Terry. And Terry's husband, Carlos Baralt, asked Jose about Kitty's suspicions.

Jose told Carlos he wasn't cheating on his wife, but he admitted to not being in love with Kitty anymore. He said the only reason he didn't get a divorce was because she kept his house and raised his children in the way that he wanted. Jose was, in fact, not being faithful, not even to his mistresses. While working for RCA, he had met a blonde, attractive young booking agent who lived in LA, and the two shared a several-hour intimate lunch together in Hollywood one afternoon, and from there, the rest was history. I was always attracted to Jose. There's something that's very sexy about a man who's powerful, full of himself,

and as charming as he was. He absolutely gave off this sexual thing, the young agent stated to author Robert Ray. That's how I know she's young. I know she must have been like in her 20s, because no, like, yeah, I in my younger days, I could see something sexy about a man who's powerful and full of himself and charming. But as a more seasoned woman, those things are red flags. Those things are red flags, especially being full of themselves. So she and Jose would speak on the phone constantly. They took vacations disguised as business trips together. And when Robert Ray asked why Jose was having an affair with her,

the booking agent said, quote, Why do men look for anything outside of marriage? It's what they're not getting at home. He was exciting and he wanted excitement. He didn't get excitement at home, end quote. However, this booking agent said something interesting where she said Jose wasn't super open like sexually you know like he liked having sex but he wasn't kind of into trying new things or like pushing the envelope and she said it would take a lot of work to get him to relax and open up and it would annoy her when he'd cancel plans they'd made to go to one of his son's tennis matches and it doesn't seem like this woman really liked Eric and Lyle because she'd met them at a music awards show once, and she described them as being arrogant little snots in their little tuxedos. But this West Coast lady was not Jose's one and only because

even before he'd met her, he'd been having a multi-year affair, eight years in total, with a woman living in New York City, something Jose's wife Kitty would also discover when going through his credit card receipts. In the midst of all of this, Jose's professional life became more unstable when RCA was bought by General Electric in 1985. Instead of being promoted to president of the company, as Jose had been expecting, he was let go with a severance of a million dollars. But luckily, that same year, Jose got a tip from a Beverly Hills entertainment lawyer that Carol Co Pictures in LA was looking for a new head of their home video division. The Menendez family was headed to La La Land, to a place where lives

are changed. And you can objectively say that every single one of their lives would be forever changed. That's where we're going to end today. was a lot there's a lot to digest there and I think again this is why we have to do it this way it's a lot of exposition it's a lot about going backwards before going forward before even talking about

why we're covering this case it's the Menendez murders we didn't discuss any type of murder any type of premeditation any type how that was conducted what was found the investigation none of it none of it We have to go back and understand the potential motive behind the

killing first. And we're not saying we agree with it or disagree with it yet. We're just giving you context. We're giving you the backstory because this is what the Menendez brothers are articulating to the jury and to the court to justify their actions. They're trying to create a level of sympathy for their lives leading up to this event so that they can say, listen, yeah, we're not saying we didn't do it, but this is why. And once you hear everything, you may not feel like we're guilty of anything either. So again, we'll reserve judgment. We have a lot to go. This is going to be a multiple parter and weigh down with your comments, questions below, and let us know what you think. There's

a lot to go over there. And I'm hoping, I know for me, it's all new, hoping for those out there who have looked into this case, there's a lot of new stuff in there for you as well. So now we have a little bit of the foundation. I'm sure we'll have more foundation next week as well, and then we'll maybe start the transition, but this is going to be a long one. So strap in, get your notebook ready, your pen ready, and write all your notes down because this one is going to be going on for a while. I would go out on a limb and say this first episode is going to be coming out next week, which is going to be actually this week, it's going to be the end of it. So it's going to be the end of it. So it's going to be around April 18th, 19th, something around there.

More than likely when we see some of you at CrimeCon, we'll still be in the middle of the series or near the end of it. So a lot to discuss when we see you in person, because this is going to be an extensive series. Yeah, I was just thinking that too, because I'm looking down, I made notes of where I need to pick up next time, because as I'm going going through this I'm like organizing the next video in my head and I wrote like how many parts and then I started like kind of decalculating and then I just wrote a big question mark and then like a face where it was like you know like a like a oh my god face because I'm gonna try to get it all in eight parts but it's so extensive like and then it's

been a little overwhelming for me because I've been making notes of things that popped out that I'd forgotten or I didn't remember or I didn't even know. And I'm like, wow, it's very extensive. It's very extensive. You will be shocked. And it's kind of exciting to tell it to you because you don't know, figure out who Eric and Lyle are, who Jose was, and you're being very accurate in that. And knowing what's going to come is just probably going to support everything you already believe. It's very, I'm looking forward to unraveling the whole story with you and for everyone who's listening and watching. Yep. The old school Crime Weekly right here. You guys asked for it. Here it is. And so, yeah, if you do eight parts, it'll bring us right till we go to CrimeCon Nashville. It'll be the last part would come out on the 30th, somewhere around there of May. So we appreciate you guys being here. This was a long episode. I'm sure many of you are not complaining about it. This is a long one. So we will look forward to hearing

your thoughts on it. We'll be back next week with part two, but obviously we'll have a Crime Weekly news as well. Everyone stay safe out there. We will see you next week. Bye.