RedHanded - Episode 391 - The Menendez Brothers Part 1: Silver Spoon Killers

Episode Date: March 20, 2025

In this long-awaited episode, we dive into one of the most infamous true-crime cases in American history: the story of Lyle and Erik Menendez. The brutal 1989 slayings of their wealthy parents, José and Kitty Menendez, divided a nation: but where do we stand?In Part 1, we take you through the chilling night of the crime, the early investigations, and the lavish spending spree that raised eyebrows everywhere. We unravel the media frenzy, the shocking confessions, and the family secrets that would go on to define this sensational story… Were the brothers cold-blooded killers driven by greed? Or victims of unimaginable abuse who saw no other way out?Ahead of their resentencing hearing later this year, this is your first and final stop for everything you need to know about the Menendez Brothers case.Video version will be available Thursday 20th March on our YouTube channelExclusive bonus content:Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHandPatreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesFollow us on social media:YouTubeTikTokInstagramVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad free. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple podcasts. But before we kick off, something to remind you of or maybe something to tell you about for the first time. Wondry's Exhibit C, a true crime cruise, is happening from January 26th to the 30th, 2026, next year, sailing from Miami, which is in Florida, if you need reminding, all the way to NASA in the Bahamas. And you might already know,

you may have heard on the whispers, on the grapevine, that both Ceruti and I will be there on that cruise, and we can't wait to meet you on board. There will be absolutely loads of stuff to do there on that cruise and we can't wait to meet you on board. There will be absolutely loads of stuff to do on that big ship. Loads of cool activities, self-defence classes, true crime trivia nights, workshops led by true crime experts, loads of stuff that you can't even imagine. The final pre-sale deadline is the 26th of February so make sure you sign up soon to

secure your spot on the best choice of cabin. And those cabins, my guys, pretty good. Go to exhibitseacruise.com for even more details. Everything you need to know. It's all at exhibitseacruise.com. See you in the Bahamas. Now you know everything you need to know. Let's get back to the show. Scam Factory, the explosive new true crime podcast from Wondery, exposes a multi-billion Let's get back to the show. wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah. I'm Saruti. And welcome to Red Handed.

Sponsored by Kim Kardashian and her Justice League. Are you wearing your skims? Do you know what? I'm not, but they're so good. You've got to hand it to a man. They are pretty good. They are really good. TMI. I did wear them. I bought some, wore them.

I was like, this is great. Yeah. Gave me savage ingrown hair. Really? Do you remember when I text you? Yes, I do. Over Christmas and I was like, a mate, I've got a fucking ginormous cyst. It was an ingrown hair from Skims. Well, there you go. Swings and roundabouts.

You've been warned. Anyway, we're not going to talk about Skims. Or my cysts. Or probably, maybe we'll talk about Kim. I don't know. We'll see how we go. We're not going to start by talking about Kim. We're going to start with a 911 call. Just before midnight on the 20th of August 1989, Los Angeles Police Department received this emergency call. Yes, police. What's the problem? What's the problem? What's the problem? Someone killed my parents. Pardon me?

Someone killed my parents. What? Who? Are they still there? Yes. The people? No, no. Were they shot?

Yes. Were they shot? Yes. They were shot? Yes. Were they shocked? Yes. They were shocked? Yes. What happened? What happened?

I have a hysterical person on me trying to get to him for the other unit responding. Is the person still there? What happened? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know if you noticed, but I'm not sure. I don't know if you noticed, but I'm not sure. I don't know if you noticed, but I'm not sure. I don't know if you noticed, but I'm not sure. I don't know if you noticed, but I'm not sure. I don't know if you noticed, but I'm not sure. I don't know if you noticed, but I'm not sure. I don't know if you noticed, but I'm not sure. I don't know if you noticed, but I'm not sure. I don't know if you noticed, but I'm not sure.

I don't know if you noticed, but I'm not sure. I don't know if you noticed, but I'm not sure. I don't know if you noticed, but I'm not sure. I don't know if you noticed, but I'm not sure. My mom and dad. You know what? They're still in the house, the people that did the shooting. Get away from them. Okay, hey, let me talk to Eric. It's hurting me so much. Who is the person that was shot? My mom and my dad.

Your mom and dad? My mom and my dad. Okay, hold on a second. Okay, we're on our way over there with an ambulance. Okay, I gotta go. Okay. Hello, this is the police department. Yes? Okay, I want you to come outside.

Okay, just come out the front door. Responders arrived outside a very swanky mansion, 722 North Elm Drive in Beverly Hills, where 21-year-old Lyle Menendez, the caller, and his 18-year-old brother Eric were sobbing hysterically. And inside, authorities found a house of horrors. The boy's parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, lay dead in the family's TV room, its elegant cream furnishings now soaked in blood. Forty-five-year-old patriarch Jose was slumped dead on his cream couch. In life, he'd been a successful CEO with a winning smile. In death, the picture was less than pretty.

His head was grotesquely swollen, and the cops described it as looking like a pumpkin. The boy's mother, Mary Louise Kitty Menendez, lay near the doorway, a gruesome trail of blood snaking off behind her. Her face and teeth were mangled, can't do eyes, can't do teeth, to the point that she was barely recognisable. The couple had clearly been shot multiple times at close range with powerful shotguns, and in just one fatal night, this seemingly perfect family, who appeared to have it all, had been blown apart. Literally. Thank you. Just in case you needed that extra detail. Now look, I'm not going to talk down to all of you listening, watching, you've probably already heard about this sensational case. The minute you say the word Menendez, most

people are like, oh yeah, them. Because of course, the deaths of Jose and Kitty Menendez are some of the most infamous slayings in true crime history. And their sons have become unlikely celebrities in their own right. Lyle and Eric's story, of course, featured on Ryan Murphy's hit Netflix anthology series, Monsters, in September, 2024. And since then, every Gen Z TikToker and their mum has probably made a video about them. So we thought that at long last, after many, many, many DMs from all of you, it was our turn to dive into the Menendez's murky world. So join us on a wild ride packed with scandal, betrayal, million dollar mansions, courtroom

showdowns and enough family dysfunction to rival the most melodramatic of soap operas and probably make your family unit feel quite normal. With a potential release date on the cards for the brothers because spoilers, they're in prison. This is your one-stop shop to find out everything you need to know before their re-sentencing hearing in March 2025. This is the twisted jaw-dropping saga of the Menendez brothers. But before we get into the hows and the whys, we should hit rewind for a second and meet the Menendezes, while they were still alive, obviously. While they were still alive, obviously. They were a family with the ultimate American dream success story. At the head of the table,

an immigrant dad who'd not just made it in the land of hope and glory, he absolutely fucking smashed it. But it wasn't quite rags to riches. Born in 1944 in Havana, Cuba, Jose Menendez had a pretty charmed life to start off with. His father, Jose Francisco, was a famous footballer nicknamed Pepin, who later ran his own illustrious accounting firm. His mum, Maria, had been a champion swimmer in her youth and was one of the few women to be inducted into Cuba's sporting hall of fame at the time. I don't want to be a bitch. Do it.

There aren't that many people in Cuba. I don't know if being a champion of anything is actually particularly impressive. You tell her. You tell that bitch. Anyway, it's a shit what I think. They were a superstar family tree and they traced their lineage back to Spain. The Menendez family were also rich in funds and in connections, just as if not more important. And like his future sons, little Jose was a silver spoon kid to his core.

But you know what they say, pride tends to come before a big fat fall. And in mid-century Havana, a little revolution was about to shake things up. My laser hair removal ladies had something so funny yesterday, day before. That's like an equivalent saying to pride before a fall. She's South African so it might be like an Afrikaans translation. I don't know but she was like, peacock today, feather duster tomorrow. True, true. Although who's getting their feather dusters made with peacock feathers?

I'd like to know. Probably the Menendez's. Yeah. Enter Fidel Castro. With his goals of dismantling the social order, he came in like a big old commie wrecking ball and hit old money clans like the Menendez's hard. The family went from privilege to exile basically overnight. So in 1960, at just 16 years old, Jose was sent to stay with distant cousins

in the unassuming town of Hazelton, Pennsylvania, in the U.S. of A. Do you know the comedian Marcelo Hernandez? No. He's on Saturday Night Live. Mm-mm. He's half-queven. Mm-hmm. He was like, do you know what it's like being raised by a woman who escaped communism?

You can't tell her you're having a bad day. She's like, oh, what happened at school? Did someone try and steal your freedom? Mm-hmm. What happened at school? Did someone try and steal your freedom? So yes, squished into his tiny new attic room, young Jose realized pretty quickly that he was a long, long way away from high society Havana. Chucked into the deep end of an anonymous American high school, he was mocked for his foreign accent and lofty idealism. He'd gone from rich kid to refugee.

And safe to say, Jose Menendez was not happy about it. But even as a teenager, Jose Menendez wasn't the type of hombre to just accept defeat. Showing the trademark confidence, also known as arrogance, that would go on to define his life, Jose vowed to rebuild his family's fortune and swim his way out of this quicksand of misfortune. And he did! Jose became a star swimmer at his high school and won a full-ride scholarship to Southern Illinois University, where he met Mary Louise Anderson, who's known by everyone as Kitty.

She herself was pretty impressive. A beauty pageant queen, two years his senior, Kitty turned heads wherever she went, including Jose's. And this cocky Cuban freshman had Kitty's head spinning too, with her college roommate saying it was like Kitty had been hit by a bulldozer. It was like Kitty had been hit by a bulldozer. After a whirlwind romance, Jose and Kitty tied the knot in 1963, aged just 19 and 21. Jose's parents, who by now had also fled from Cuba, disapproved of this union, thinking that the couple were too young to get married. Which for Catholics, is mad. But did the lovebirds care? No way, Jose.

How many times can we say that? I'm going to try so many times. I mean, if it wasn't in Porte's, I'd be like, that should be the title of the song. But let's come back to that. Okay. So yeah. Whoever gets in there the most wins a Margarita. Yes. So yeah, they ignore the parents and they get married. In fact, Jose even moved his new bride into his parents' cramped New York City apartment. Then he refocused his efforts on rebuilding his lost

fortune with characteristic zeal. Now while he'd kind of taken his foot off the gas during his uni days, now Jose was ready for the next chapter of his rags to riches, back to riches story. He spent his days washing dishes and his nights studying for an accounting degree at Queen's College. Clara in what you'd expect of somebody born with the silver spoon. He's never shy of hard work. Like when he comes here and he's like, all right, this is what I have to do to get back to where I want. I'll roll my sleeves up and I'll wash dishes.

Like he doesn't shirk away from that, from what I can tell. Now, while Jose is washing dishes and learning how to be an accountant, Glamour Girl Kitty, who had once dreamed of working in broadcasting, didn't go ahead with that. And that's because Jose felt that that was a man's career. And instead he pushed her to take a job teaching at a Bronx school. The young newlyweds were definitely broke, but they were crazy in love. They barely had a pot to piss in, but they were happy. Many years later, a few months after his parents' grisly deaths, Eric Menendez told a journalist that his mum considered those days to be the happiest of hers and Jose's life.

According to Eric, money loosened the ties. Not that Jose and Kitty knew that back then. All they knew was that they wanted more. You know those creepy stories that give you goosebumps? The ones that make you really question what's real? All they knew was that they wanted more. You know those creepy stories that give you goosebumps? The ones that make you really question what's real? Well, what if I told you that some of the strangest, darkest, and most mysterious stories are not found in haunted houses or abandoned forests, but instead in hospital rooms and

doctor's offices? Hi, I'm Mr. Ballin, the host of Mr.ollin's Medical Mysteries, and each week on my podcast, you can expect to hear stories about bizarre illnesses no one can explain, miraculous recoveries that shouldn't have happened, and cases so baffling they stumped even the best doctors. So if you crave totally true and thoroughly twisted horror stories and mysteries, Mr. Bollin's Medical Mysteries should be your new go-to weekly show. Listen to Mr. Bolland's Medical Mysteries on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app

or on Spotify or Apple podcasts. What if everything we thought we knew about justice was wrong? In This Is Actually Happening's new series, A World Beyond Revenge, we explore a radical idea that justice can be about healing, not just punishment. Through five powerful stories, we meet people who've experienced unimaginable harm, and those who caused it, as they come together to seek something radical. Healing. From a man tortured for a crime he didn't commit, to a woman who misidentified her attacker. These stories will change the way you think about justice, forgiveness, and the possibility

of a better world. Follow This Is Actually Happening on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to This Is Actually Happening ad-free right now by joining Wondry Plus. Like everything else in Jose Menendez's life, when he wanted something, he got it. Jose graduated in the top 10% of his class in 1967 and immediately snagged a corporate job earning $25,000 per year, which was pretty big bucks for the time. Soon afterwards, the pair expanded their family, welcoming Joseph Lyle Menendez in January 1968 and then Eric Gallen Menendez in November 1970. At the time, Jose and Kitty had no idea that these two little bundles

of joy would prove to be their undoing. How could they? That's so terrifying. Yeah. I know that like, there's that saying, like, you know, no parent should bury their child. No child should murder their parents. It's just not an eventuality you consider, is it? Quite. Yeah, I was getting my hair done yesterday and my hairdresser was talking about how his partner absolutely does not want to have children. They've decided that's the route. And we were talking about kids and stuff and he's like, but what if they murder you? And I was like, what a strange thing to say. But it happens. Chances are slim, but it happens.

Yeah, I mean children terrify me because they're so easy to fuck up. And you know, what if they're born a paranoid schizophrenic? You can't parent your way out of that one. But even I have never been like, but what if they just push you down the stairs? Yeah, it's all for our other podcast, the parenting one. Don't do it. Speaking of alternate podcasts in the realm of make-believe that we will never make, Hannah Maguire's What Else Don't I Know? I just got reminded of this because of the name Jose. For the longest time, I thought the first line of the American national anthem was not, oh, say can you see? Jose.

Jose, can you see? And I was like, that's weird considering their immigration policy. But I just accepted it for decades. Just the first word. Yeah, Jose. Wow. Yeah. Well, there you go. What else don't I know? It really worries me.

It's good to stay curious. It's good to stay curious. It's good to stay open-minded. I approve of all of those things. And it's also good to admit when you're wrong. It is. So you're winning. Thank you. Hat-trick Hannah McGuire. Anyway, with the pitter-patter of tiny murderous feet came a big change for Kitty, who gave up teaching and became a traditional housewife on Jose's insistence. After all, they can afford it now.

What a world when one person's income could support a family of four. Yeah, right. So yes, just to remind us all where we are, it's 1972. And it is then that Jose became director of operations at Hertz Rent-A-Car, bringing home the bacon to the tune of 75,000 bacons a year. A lot of bacons. That's a lot. A lot of 70s bacons for sure. Oh, so much, so much.

And during this time, Jose developed a reputation as a cold-blooded shark, making his mark in each company he joined by proposing bold restructures that usually just involved brutally cutting down on staff. Ax swing, love it. The world needs them. Get rid of them. Jose had the business instincts of a pit bull and all the tact of one too. But it was this combination of grit and tenacity that sent him soaring through the ranks of the corporate world.

And little by little, the Menendez fortune started to pile up once again. By the time the 80s rolled around, Jose had become the COO of RCA Records. A label that looked after some of the world's biggest recording artists at the time, including Dolly Parton and Rick Astley. And prepare to be blown away in not just your eighties boots, but in your bloody 2025 boots. His salary at this time was a whopping $500,000 a year. Never going to let you down. No way, Jose.

Damn you. McGuire one, but Lazeiro. So while Jose hustled as a senior executive in the Big Apple and indulged in a few cheeky extramarital affairs with women that he met there, Kitty and the boys settled into an affluent upper-class life near Princeton in New Jersey. Young Lyle and Eric attended the prestigious Princeton Day School, while Kitty lived her very best trophy wife life, filling her halcyon days with charity galas and drinks with the gals. Like when the Simpsons move into Scorpio, Scorpius, and she just develops a drinking

problem because the house is a robot and does everything for her. Yes, that is Kitty. But in 1985, the Menendez family life was uprooted once more by Jose taking a top role at Live Entertainment, the VHS branch of Coralco Pictures, which brought with it an eye-watering new salary and a relocation to Los Angeles. The prospect of leaving her East Coast world behind was daunting for Kitty, but she never wavered in her public support of her husband. A business associate later described Kitty

as Jose with a wig, dedicated to his cause of making as much money as possible. Have you ever met someone's brother or sister and you're like, oh my God, my aunt, I met his sister once. But I was like, oh my God, it's a wig, a wig, a wig, a wig, can't stop. Yeah. I read those names. Yeah, for sure. I think it was the most like shocking thing, uni graduation. One guy known throughout uni turned up. I was like, Oh my God, his mom is him in a wig. They have the same fucking face. Yeah. It's unnerving, isn't it?

It is. Don't like it. And Kitty wasn't just Jose in a wig. She just let him do whatever he wanted as long as he was bringing home those big bacons. She'd put up with his philandering for years. So what was one more sacrifice like a move to LA on top of all of that? And if the big move meant that Kitty would become a bit of a desperate housewife, sneaking a few prescription pills in with her martinis to get through the day, then at least she would be in good company. Because in LA the Menendez family were joining a nouveau riche world where appearances were everything. And money didn't just talk, it screamed in your face.

Jose bought a lavish pad in Calabasas, which is if you don't know where the Kardashians live. I didn't. You didn't know they're living in Calabasas? I did not know that. I've heard of Calabasas, but not from the Kardashians because I've never watched the Kardashians, but from like rap songs, where they talk about Calabasas and I'm like, oh, that's a thing. Though fun fact, my good friend Gloria, who makes music, one of her songs has been picked. It's going to be in the new season of the Kardashians. Oh my God, amazing. Good for her. I was like, fucking

mate, that's, that's big time. That is her. It's going to be in the episode where, and she was just telling me, I have no idea, but they're going to go to Milan Fashion Week. And my friend Gloria is half Italian, half German. And she was like, let me sing some songs in Italian, because that could also be picked up. And it got picked up and they're going to play it when they're doing the runway scene. Oh amazing, good for her. That's fun, isn't it?

Oh, that is fun. Anyway if you don't know where Calabasas is it's as bougie as it gets. And Jose let Kitty splash out on all of the ambitious renovations her heart desired, including moving their swimming pool by just a few feet to achieve the entertaining space of her dreams. Back then, it was all about keeping up with the Menendezes. Have you seen that Alec Baldwin? Is it Alec Baldwin? What's the guy who did the shooting? Alec Baldwin. Alec Baldwin. And his wife, the one who pretends to be Spanish. Oh, Ilaria.

Is she pretending to be Spanish or is she pretending to be Latin American? I'm not sure. She's pretending to be Spanish. Okay, right. They've got a new reality show. Oh, well. Have you seen the clip? No. It's really bad. Like I don't know these people. I've read before that like his wife pretends to be Spanish and that's like a laughing point. But obviously after the whole rust, you know,

that like that lady getting shot and dying on set. They think it's like obviously in an attempt to PR his image into a better one by letting the cameras in. And there's such a cringe worthy scene where, because I've seen clips of this woman speaking like with a totally normal American accent and she like grew up in the US. And there's a scene where she's like doing a little cook along and she's pretending that she's forgotten the English word for onions. And I'm like, no, you haven't. No, you fucking haven't.

It's classic hilarious. No, the interestingly, the lawyer who got him off shooting that lady on the set of Rust is defending. Did he? One of many, obviously. Sure, sure, sure. Sure. Also, whenever I think of Alec Baldwin, the only thing I can conjure in my mind is he did like a celebrity roast and his daughter goes up to the podium and she's like, hi dad, it's me, Arland. And then she plays a voicemail that he left her to be how much he fucking hates her.

Oh my god. He's a bad guy. He's a bad man. Oh god. And she is just fucking cringe when she's like, how you say, how do you say, how you say sub-boy? No way, Jose. I realized after I finished that little bit, I was like, I should have fucking said it then. That's fucking great. I'm going to bring it back up just to do it. Thank you. That's fucking great. I'm going to bring it back up just to do it. Thank you.

Back to keeping up with the Menendezes. Jose Menendez might have achieved his dream of becoming a multimillionaire by midlife, but he was nowhere near done yet because he had even bigger plans for his progeny. Picture it. The sun-soaked playground of the rich and famous in late 80s LA. Now in their late teens, Lyle and Eric were... look. Handsome is a very like subjective term. I can see why people would think that. Like they're very traditionally... Very of the time. It's very 90210.

Yes, yes, yes. Very of the time, let's say that. They're tanned, they look quite athletic, and they definitely had bright futures ahead of them. The brothers were also both talented tennis players, with Eric even tipped to go pro. And Lyle, again, no shortcomings there visibly, because he was also accepted to Princeton in 1987. And unlike their first-generation immigrant dad, these two were all American trust fund kids to the souls of their blindingly white trainers. But Jose was determined to make sure they earned every dime he passed onto them.

Jose wanted Lyle and Eric to excel in everything they did from school to sport. Like some mad 80s version of that one guy on LinkedIn who posts inspirational grind culture shit every day. I can't stand it. It winds me up so much of all of these, you know, top level CEOs doing all these seminars of like, you just need to make a vision board. If it was that easy to be a billionaire, Stephen, everyone would be a billionaire, wouldn't they? It's not how it works. My problem though is I don't even mind the billionaire CEOs doing it because I'm like, take it with a pinch of salt, take it or leave it. They actually have done it. It's when

the mid-level sales guy at a nothing company is posting inspirational quotes like over a picture of a mountain. And look, I'm like, get it, get your content, do what you want. Maybe some people are like it, but it's just a bit much. The motivational speaker who has achieved nothing is the worst kind of person. Anyway. But Jose was kind of like that. He regularly quoted rules for success from self-help and history books to urge his offspring to follow in his footsteps. He invested in expensive tennis coaches and private tutors, priming his son's dinner table conversation topics to ensure that they could charm VIPs with ease. And look, Jose Menendez has a lot of problems in the parenting department.

I'm not going to say that he doesn't. And maybe it's just because of the way I was raised that I'm like, I think it's just, he realizes that his sons are totally useless in many ways and he is just desperately trying to make sure that they don't fail at life. He's like, have this tutor, have this guy who's going to teach how to play tennis. Here are some conversation topics because you're boring as fuck. And I'm like, I feel sorry for him. I'm like, you work that hard. You get to the point that you are so successful. You have these two kids, you put all this faith in them and they are fucking shit. It's going

to be a tough pill to swallow. It's just like, look kids, at the golf club, under no circumstances, do you say that they should tax the rich more? No way, Jose. Oh no. God damn it. God damn it. But yeah, I think it's just like, it probably feels like an embarrassment for him, right? Yeah, I think so.

Yes, he wants the best possible thing for his children. Obviously, there is the argument of like, you've got enough, it's fine, you don't need more. But he really did long to become some sort of like Hispanic Kennedy. 100%. He dreamed of becoming a senator in Florida, pursuing his bold personal mission of making Cuba a US territory to get revenge on Castro, while first born Lyle would one day be the first Cuban American president. Jose had it all figured out. But then came the first snag. As teens, Lyle and Eric weren't exactly living up to Jose's

sky high expectations for them. In 1987, during his first semester at Princeton, Lyle was caught plagiarising a psychology essay and faced expulsion. Ugh, the shame. Mm-mm. And to get caught in 1987 where they didn't even have plagiarism bloody software. It's quite embarrassing embarrassing isn't it? Did you literally just like staple your name to a book and hand it in? This debacle was not part of the plan and Jose was not going to let it derail him either.

He flashed his checkbook and struck a deal with the Dean and got Lyle's punishment reduced to a one year suspension. He flashed his checkbook and struck a deal with the Dean and got Lyle's punishment reduced to a one-year suspension. The head boy in my year at school was almost expelled for sleeping with a sex worker on rugby tour in Brazil, but his parents made a one million pound donation to the school and then he was head boy. I know who you are. So does he. And if that story is incorrect, I don't

care. Anyway, the one year suspension as a result of the money waggling could only be an unintentional gap year. And using that time, Lyle followed in the well-worn footsteps of all NEPO babies the world over and he became an intern for his dad's company, which is also what the head boy of my year did. Look, the thing is, you can be like, that's unfair, but I'm like, parents can a parent. They can be like, yeah, so what? My kid's a dickhead. But he's my kid. I'm gonna have to give him a fucking job or an internship or throw some money at this. Like, that's life. It wasn't just Lyle though. That was Jose's problem at this point, because in 1988,

Eric got caught up in a string of bling ring style burglaries around Calabasas. Eric and his brat pack pals, including Lyle on at least one occasion, hit up homes that they knew belonged to wealthy parents of kids they went to school with who were on holiday or something at the time. Which would have been everybody. Yes. They would break into these homes and they actually ended up stealing over $100,000 worth of cash and jewellery that they kept in a storage locker

and just dipped into every time they wanted a bit of like extra pocket money. Look, Jose was unsurprisingly incredibly not happy and you can understand why. He's just like, I was fucking washing dishes. I give you everything and you're still stealing and humiliating me and just like no shame, still stealing and humiliating me and just like no shame, just everything. Everything that is the worst nightmare of a parent that struggled at least at one point to give their child everything. Yes. I really think that people who live risk-free existences have no self-awareness at all. So yes, again, I don't want it to sound like I'm just defending Jose, but because he has

a lot of problems in the parenting department, like I said, but of course he's fucking raging. And as would become a bit of a pattern, daddy's money did the talking yet again. Jose paid hefty sums to appease the victims and hired top lawyers to cut a deal for Eric. The result? A slap on the wrist and court ordered therapy instead of jail time. And you can argue, of course, he should have let Eric go down for it, like teach him a lesson, make him hit like rock bottom and build himself up from there. Which yes, would probably be the right thing to do, but he also knows his kid's a fucking

shithead and if he does that, he's fucked for life. And nobody become president after they've gone to prison for theft. No way, Jose. I quit. Three. McQuarrie three. Yeah, fine. So to dodge further scandal, Jose ended up relocating the family to an even glitzier postcode. You guessed it, 90210. That's right, Beverly Hills baby, where the family settled

into an eight-bedroom mansion whose previous occupants included Prince and Elton John. Though I have it on good authority not at the same time. Okay, this episode is all pretty grim so let's take a little break to tell you about something else that was quite grim. If you guys don't know, and you should know by now really, that Hannah and I have quite the bubbling Patreon situation going on. If you don't know what that is, I don't know what to say. Patreon.com slash red handed. It's essentially like a very unsexy OnlyFan. Unless you find us talking about things like the brand new Meghan Markle debacle with love from Meghan Sussex, whoever the fuck she is, whatever's going on, reviewing

that entire series and you would like to listen to that. That's exactly what we did on our post-show party which is called Under the Duvet this week. So if you are interested in that kind of content from us, head on over to patreon.com slash red-handed right now. You can buy individual episodes if that's what you want to do. We release bonus episodes every single month. We also release weekly episodes of Under the Duvet or you can sign up for a full-on subscription and just get it direct to your ear holes every single week when we release things. So go check that out. It's quite the experience watching with love that is. Watching us is always a delight.

So apart from minor scrapes with the law and some strict tiger parenting that might have raised a few eyebrows, the Menendez family looked the part. And in the dizzying heights of Beverly Hills, that was all it took. Fake it till you make it wasn't just a mantra, it was a lifestyle. Because as long as the outside world saw what Jose and Kitty Menendez wanted them to see, the perfect facade of a high achieving family, nobody really thought to ask questions about what might be going on behind the scenes. That is until that night in August 1989 when suddenly it was the only thing that people were talking about. The number one question in the hills was who could have wanted to destroy Jose and Kitty Menendez so badly.

But Lyle and Eric, for all of their displays of hysterical grief, didn't have to wonder too hard about that one. Because they knew exactly who shot their parents. They did. As for why, that's a bit more complicated. Now first, we're going to tell you what the Menendez brothers did on the night of the shootings without getting too deep into the emotional clusterfuck that caused it all. Don't worry, we'll get there, we promise. But let's start, for now at least, with the Stone Cold Facts.

On the 20th of August 1989, Lyle and Eric had plans for a fun night out. They'd arranged to meet their pal Perry Berman at the Taste of LA food festival in Santa Monica, after a cinema showing of Batman that would finish at around 9.30pm. Now, although Perry had waited a while, the brothers never showed up to the festival. It turned out later that they'd had their hands are quite full, specifically with a loaded 12 gauge shotgun apiece. So at around 10pm, Lyle and Eric entered the family room at their Beverly Hills home, where the Bond film, The Spy Who Loved Me, was playing on the widescreen TV.

And within minutes of getting into the house, they had both shot their parents dead. A single shot to the back of Jose's head killed him instantly, blasting parts of his skull and brain across the room in a catastrophic blowout injury. But the brothers kept firing. Five more bullets piercing Jose's arms and his body. They used manual pump-action shotguns loaded with buckshot, making each shot a laborious and conscious effort which is important. This wasn't just a random spray of bullets. The boys shot their mother ten times. Having survived the initial blows to her limbs

and her hand, Kitty desperately tried to crawl away whilst bleeding and moaning in agony. She was still alive, just. Lyle and Eric ran back to the car where Eric passed his big brother the ammunition he needed to reload his weapon and then they went back in the house. When they returned, Lyle put the barrel of the shotgun to Kitty's cheek and pulled the trigger to finish her off. It was a bloodbath, with the couple's remains dripping from the walls and pooling on the parquet floor. With blood and brains covering every surface and with the acrid gun smoke still swirling in the air, the brothers calmly and meticulously collected the spent shell casings from the floor.

Which again, very important for later. Then they bolted and they headed straight to the cinema in a bid to cover their tracks. There they tried to buy tickets to Batman but the cinema refused as the film was almost over. So they got tickets for the next screening but the brothers ultimately tossed the stubs after realising their timestamps wouldn't work for the alibi that they wanted. So adrenaline pumping, Lyle and Eric hit the road again. The brothers would later say that they dumped their clothes and weapons and shell casings in a dumpster behind a Santa Monica gas station, although these were never found.

Even if they had managed to get into Batman, surely the police would talk to the cinema people and they'd be like, oh yeah, there were those two guys who came 10 minutes before the end actually. It just seems like very odd. Oh, I mean, yeah, there's just, there's many a problem. Many a problem. I think the police would have said, no way, Jose. Come on. No. Still in the lead. My delivery could do some work on that one. I was just desperate. And after they were turned away from Batman, Eric and Lyle reached the Taste of LA festival at about 11pm, by which time it was closing and their stood up friend, Perry Berman, had

gone home. And look, I know that there is a connection. I know that there is a connection. I cannot remember off the top of my head and I won't waste everybody's time. But they just give me such like American psycho vibes. It's that like that time at 80s. I know that Patrick Bateman isn't in LA, but it's kind of that like tanned hyper like athletic fixated with your appearance, like listening to all the pop songs as we'll see the big fans and milly vanilly these two. And it's just like that hyper fixation and this whole like, let's go to see Batman and then like the taste of LA, I know Patrick Bateman never would have seen Batman. But you know what I mean?

It's like a younger Patrick Bateman. That's the vibe I feel. And this is what I mean when I say that people who've lived a risk-free existence aren't self-aware. Because nothing has ever gone wrong for them. I really think they don't see a world in which they don't get away with it. Of course they don't because every time Eric and Lyle have done something wrong, even stealing from people's homes, stealing jewelry from their classmates' parents' homes, their dad

got them off it. So it's like, could something go wrong in my life? No way, Jose. Better. Thank you. Have we equalized? I don't know if I'm going to give you the one before. Also, can I ask why I went to go watch the rugby at the weekend? Not against my will, but like semi against my will. And I was like, oh, they've equalized. And everyone laughed. Is that something you don't say in sport? And then they all kept saying it for the rest of the day. Oh, they've equalized. I thought that's the thing people said. You know what

I mean, right? In football, you can say that. I don't understand rugby. I know nothing. And then they were like, oh, it's equalizer three. I don't get it. Don't get it. Why can't I say they equalized? Somebody tell me. Was it because it was a try before a conversion? Maybe. That might be it. Help! I was like, well fuck it. I was just trying to take part. There's the danger. Because men love laughing at you. They love it. The women love too. They were just like, ah.

They were just glad they weren't the ones that said something stupid. Anyway, Lyle called Perry to apologise for their lateness and asked him to meet them at a local restaurant. At 11 o'clock at night? No way, Jose. Before ringing back a few minutes later with a new plan. Lyle suggested that Perry should come over to the Menendez house so they could pick up Eric's fake ID and go out drinking. Probably fed up with being messed around, Perry said that he would just meet them at the restaurant. The brothers didn't keep that date either. Poor Perry. Instead, they drove back to their house on North Elm Drive, discovered their parents' bodies and made the frantic 911 call we heard at the top of the show. And

the rest was history, kind of. Yeah, very kinder. Because that night the LAPD didn't exactly follow proper procedures to find out who had killed Jose and Kitty Menendez. When officers arrived at the bloody scene, the boys' obvious hysteria threw them right off guard, causing them to let standard protocols slip. They let Lyle and Eric into the house, even though it was a crime scene. Gunpowder residue tests weren't done on the men's hands, which would have showed if they had fired guns that night, and if they had, those very same hands would have been and should have been and could have been instantly cuffed. As a result, the Menendez brothers were thrown one hell of an unexpected life raft, one that

would keep them free for the next six months. For now, at least, they were getting away with it. But whether it was cold-blooded murder or something trickier and perhaps harder to define, we'll come back to that later. A few days after the deaths, a memorial for José and Kitty Menendez was held at the swanky Directors Guild of America Theatre. Stuart Benjamin, a film producer who did business with Live, which is the company that Jose worked for, described the service as weird and said that both of the brothers seemed stone cold.

Lyle, in particular, emanated calm and gravitas, almost appearing to act like his dad. He delivered a flawless eulogy repeating his father's favourite themes of greatness and success without so much as a voice crack. Guests were shocked by how composed this 21-year-old college kid seemed. And the brothers also chose the 80s bop, Girl I'm Gonna Miss You by Milly Vanilli, to play at the end of the service. Quite a strange choice. Strange choice, but I'm glad they're, you know, Milly Vanilli getting some airtime there.

So all in all, there was something definitely kind of off about the whole memorial. But perhaps this wasn't that surprising because the truth was nobody really liked Jose Menendez. He had a fearsome reputation as a businessman and had definitely made far more enemies than friends during his life. True, but people not liking him, they're not a big fan. His own brother-in-law, Carlos Barralat, called him brutal and said, quote, he had an alarming lack of compassion or respect for his colleagues and subordinates, with a tendency to, quote, make people feel very, very small.

In fact, nobody had anything nice to say about Jose at all, except for his secretary, Marzi Eisenberg, who proudly called herself Jose's office wife. Oh, you hate to see it. Oh, so gross. I mean, you can probably join the dots on that one between Marzie and Jose for yourself. Kitty, on the other hand, because remember she is also dead, was a bit more of an enigma. She had a few friends in LA and seemed to be described mostly as an extension of her

larger than life husband. One of Jose's sisters, Marta Cano, said that she admired Kitty for being intelligent and a handyman and able to put together a barbecue. That's hard, I've seen The Simpsons. It is hard. I don't know if she means like throw a barbecue. Or build. Or build a barbecue. How many barbecues have you seen Kitty Menendez build, Marta? I don't know. Maybe loads. But also I would say if I get horribly murdered by my own children in the future, I sincerely hope that, you know, my sister-in-law has something better to say than I'm a handyman

who can put together a barbecue. So yes, not exactly glowing praise after you've been murdered to death. The Menendez's may not have inspired warm and fuzzy feelings in those they met, but it was still hard to imagine who would have killed them in such a brutal fashion. So as it does the rumour mill got to work and soon word in the press was that this was a gangland style killing with links to organised crime. Police initially suspected the brutal overkill was done to send a message, as in mafia or drug cartel style murders. And let's be real, Jose being a Cuban immigrant probably had more to do with this train of thought than the LAPD would be willing to admit. Whilst officials from

Live Entertainment, Jose's employers, called this theory bizarre and offensive, the Menendez brothers fanned the flames of speculation. Yeah they were fucking thrilled. That's the best day of their fucking life. Yes. Lyle immediately suggested that the killings were business related and name-dropped someone called Noel Bloom, an associate with mob Lynx who Jose had beef with. The brothers hired round-the-clock bodyguards to show that they feared for their lives. Although Lyle controversially dismissed his protection after just one week, claiming he'd heard from a trusted mafia-affiliated source that the brothers were actually safe.

And this was not the only thing that raised eyebrows. Friends described Lyle becoming a strange swaggering imitation of his father, Jose, overnight. Investing in businesses and making grand sweeping plans to fulfil his father's legacy. Lyle seemed keen to fill his dad's shoes immediately and his credit card for that matter. I mean, they will have inherited so much money. We'll get to that. So as well as receiving instant access to a $300,000 life insurance policy, the brothers were authorised to use Jose's credit account,

which had a $250,000 limit. The piggy bank had been well and truly cracked open, but already there was a creeping fear that the money might run dry sooner than they'd like. How? Because of how they're spending it. And also because Lyle and Eric had a sneaking suspicion that their father, Jose, had followed through on various threats that he'd made to them over the years and that he might just have cut them out of the will before the killing. And the brothers had pretty good reason to be worried. Just six weeks before his death, Jose had asked his sister and his brother-in-law, Terry and Carlos, Barrault, who we heard from earlier, to become executives of the family estate. Jose apparently confided in Carlos that he

was frustrated and disappointed with his sons, not surprised, and was thinking about disinheriting them. So in the weeks after Jose and Kitty were murdered, the boys made covert moves to locate their father's will and uncover its contents before anyone else could. Lyle paid a computer expert to search a hard drive belonging to Jose for any recent files with the search terms Will, Eric, Lyle and Menendez and if he found any of those files he was instructed to delete them. The boys took a family safe to a friend's house and got a locksmith to pry it open. There was some jewelry in there but no Will.

but no will. Ultimately, a will from 1981 was discovered, naming Lyle and Eric Menendez as the primary beneficiaries of Jose and Kitty Menendez's $14 million fortune. Getting losers, Lyle and Eric are going shopping. On Thursday, the 24th of August, just four days after their parents' grisly deaths, the brothers spent almost $17,000 in a jewelry shop, snapping up three Rolex watches. And the spending spree definitely did not stop there. Lyle treated himself to a 911, is that Carrera for 64 grand, while Eric chose a tan Jeep Wrangler for 17,000. The pair also stayed in swanky hotels including the Bel Air and Belage, running up excessive taps and partying hard every single night.

Lyle even bought his favorite fried chicken shop back in Princeton because why the fuck not? Police estimate that the boys spent around a million dollars in just three months. In the 80s! Lyle and Eric didn't seem to be behaving much like grieving children. Instead, they were acting like they'd won the lottery. And the LAPD smelt a very expensive rat. About fucking time. As suspicion grew, the LAPD quietly launched an investigation into the Menendez boys. And soon more incriminating details started to surface from those who knew Eric and Lyle.

Police learned that Eric and his bestie, fellow Beverly Hills High student Craig Signorelli, had written a screenplay together called Friends. Not exactly like the comedy series we're all familiar with. This version of Friends revolves around a wealthy37 million and then Hamilton Cromwell murders his parents in cold blood. Craig even told police that Eric had confided in him about being involved in his parents' death, although apparently Eric qualified everything with the words, it could have happened. It's very confusing. Craig is like clearly very conflicted.

Like he does tell the police, you know, what Eric had said to him, but he's also like, I don't know, it could have happened. Like, I don't know, I'm just telling you. But he's obviously like, doesn't want to believe that his co-script writing buddy actually murdered his parents because Craig's just like a fucking normal guy. And he did maintain his friend's innocence, but he also agreed to wear a wire and to try and get Eric to confess in a recorded meeting that went down in November 1989.

Ultimately though, the wire exercise was a dead end. Eric didn't admit to anything on tape. No way, Jose. But by this stage the LAPD were utterly convinced that Eric and Lyle had played a role in their parents' deaths. They just couldn't quite prove it. But despite mounting police pressure, the Menendez brothers' downfall ended up coming from a totally unexpected source. After the 1988 burglaries, Eric was ordered, if you remember, to attend regular therapy sessions. He hadn't engaged much in these sessions, but by late 1989, he was struggling mentally and turned to his assigned shrink.

One Dr. Jerome Ozil. In contrast to Lyle's swaggering confidence, Eric said that he felt like a ghost, haunted by what he and his brother had done to his parents. In the aftermath of the shootings, Eric saw Oseale for regular therapy sessions and began to let slip some disturbing details. Mmm. He confided in Dr. Oseale about the unsettling nightmares that he was having about his parents' deaths, appearing incredibly troubled and even expressing suicidal thoughts. And then on the 31st of October 1989,

All Hallows Eve. Uh huh. Eric blurted out a sudden confession. We did it. And presumably Dr. Osear was thinking, no way Jose. I don't like that one. Still though, that Halloween, Dr. Jerome Oseale began playing a very dangerous game. He brought Lyle into a session with Eric and Lyle was furious at his brother. But Oseale assured them that he was bound by patient-doctor confidentiality to keep their secret. But he did need a few more details. He interrogated the brothers about the night of the murders.

He asked things like how they'd felt, why they did it, obvious things like that. Lyle and Ellic allegedly revealed that they hatched a plan to murder their parents after watching a film about a son killing his father. They said that the pressure they were under and the control that Jose exerted on their lives had become unbearable and their only option was to kill him. And unfortunately for them this meant taking their mum out of the equation too. According to Ozil, the boys described Kitty as a pathetic shell of a human being and reasoned that she would be unable to survive without Jose. Very twisted family annihilator kind of rhetoric, isn't it?

Yeah, I was going to say, I think, please remember this. Please remember the things that they're saying to Dr. Oseale at this point, the way that they're rationalizing their behavior. Because Hannah is completely right. This idea of like, it's a mercy killing, I was under too much pressure, I couldn't keep up with what they wanted, it was better off this way. Classic, classic, classic psychopathic family annihilator mentality. When the story shifts later, don't forget that this is what they said initially. To a therapist who by the way is telling them, I'm not going to tell anybody. So why not tell him the whole truth at this point if there is a different truth. Ozeal would later go on to allege that this twisted logic led the boys to callously murder their parents on the night of the 20th of August 1989 as a part of a calculated plan.

of the 20th of August 1989 as a part of a calculated plan. So why is Dr. Ozeel continuing to conduct these therapy sessions with two self-confessed murderers? We're going to find out because Dr. Ozeel is not exactly on the straight and narrow himself. Now let's talk a little bit about patient-do doctor confidentiality under Californian law at the time. It basically meant that a therapist technically was not allowed to disclose information about a past homicide. But this crucially does not apply when the therapist believes that there is an active threat. Good.

Yes. Thank fuck for that. Now, Dr. Oseal said that Lyle was out of his mind with rage that Eric had cracked and he had threatened to murder him and Oseel if the doctor told anybody about what the brothers had done. If this was true, if Lyle had said this, which I can absolutely believe that he did, Oseel would have been well within his rights to report them. But he didn't. No way, Jose.

Instead, the brothers' alleged confessions would ultimately be exposed, along with Dr. Oseel's own dirty laundry, in the messiest way possible. Thanks to an iconic, yet slightly nutty woman named Judeleon Smith. Why is it Smythe? I thought that. I watched the show and I'm pretty sure it was Smith. Judeleon was an eccentric, holly-weird, crystal saleswoman with a big personality and even bigger sunglasses. She walked so that Gwyneth Paltrow could run. She was Dr O'Zeal's mistress on top of all of that and when

they weren't shagging he'd give her off-the-books therapy while spilling the beans about his patients. Ozeel's on one. Fuck. So as a result of this, Judelon had plenty of dirt on this less-than-ethical doctor. Crucially, he had confided in her about the Menendez brothers' confession, hinting that there was $14 million at stake if he played his cards right. Which obviously suggests he was trying to blackmail the brothers with his silence or lack thereof. But as things grew rockier for her and Dr. Daddy, as he apparently made her call him, that is so vile. Tudelon ended up going to the LAPD to report her weird boyfriend for rape and being a fucking

horrible guy. The police though were much more interested in what Judelon had to say about the Menendez case. So when she let slip that Dr. Oseel had tapes of the brothers confessing to the killing of their parents, the LAPD figured that that just had to be enough for them to finally pounce. And so on the 8th of March 1990, Lyle was about to take Eric's brand new Jeep for a spin with two pals when armed police officers surrounded the car and yelled for him to get out. In a dramatic showdown, Lyle was cuffed and shoved face down into the pavement of the street where his parents had died over six months ago. He was finally under arrest on suspicion of their

murders. As for Eric, well, he was out of the country. He was in Israel playing a tennis tournament at the time of Lyle's arrest. Eric flew back to LA via London and surrendered three days later. As shockwaves rippled throughout Beverly Hills, the Menendez family, the wider family, were reeling too. Lyle and Eric's paternal grandmother, Maria Menendez, swore blind that her grandsons were innocent, proclaiming with zero evidence but total conviction that she still believed it was the mob. And

look, I get it. It's so easy to be like, oh my God, that's so stupid for, like, who wants to believe that their grandkids murdered your son and daughter-in-law? Yeah, your son who achieved the American dream. Quite. But while Maria may have been saying that out loud, the rest of the Menendez family weren't too sure about this. The boys' relatives rallied around them, but a few of them definitely had their suspicions. And they weren't going to just throw them to the wolves. They lured the lads up to their eyeballs and vowed to prove their innocence, whatever they probably secretly thought. The brothers stayed incarcerated at the LA County jail for three years before their

case went to trial in 1993. And their legal defence was, initially, on pretty shaky ground. The case had been all over the headlines and pretty much everybody believed that Lyle and Eric were just two spoiled rich kids who'd killed their parents for their inheritance. And for a long time, nothing the boys said gave anyone any reason to think differently. Until Eric got a new lawyer called Leslie Abramson was small in stature but larger than life, with corkscrew blonde curls and charisma oozing from her very pores. One journalist described her as a 4'11 little orphan Annie lookalike, who was 104 pounds of pure dynamite. Famously Abramson had defended Arnel Salvatierra, a 17-year-old boy who shot his dad in 1988,

and she managed to reduce his murder charges to manslaughter after successfully arguing that Arnel had been abused by his father. And Salvatierra ended up just getting three years probation, not custodial. Yeah. So Leslie Abramson was hot shit. And perhaps more importantly, Eric trusted her to defend him. Leslie and Lyle's lead attorney, Jill Lansing, built up a natural rapport with the brothers during their three year incarceration at the LA County jail.

natural rapport with the brothers during their three-year incarceration at the LA County jail. For months Lyle and Eric had maintained a stony silence about why they had pulled the trigger multiple times that night in 1989. When pressed they repeated the same old lines about their loving father and mother. But Eric had been cracking for a while by now. And finally, he crumbled. Eric confessed to Leslie that there was a darker truth to the Menendez family that he and Lyle had been protecting all this time. Leslie Abramson listened in horror as Eric, shaky, distressed and stumbling over his words, revealed that his father, Jose Menendez, was a monster. Eric added that Jose had subjected both brothers to horrific emotional, psychological, physical and sexual abuse from their

early childhood. And in August 1989, they both finally snapped and fought back. And for Leslie Abramson, who had done this before, this news was a game changer. Can I also just say, we only have their word for it, that Eric reveals this information to them. So it's said there, like, he then cracks and tells Leslie Abramson that this is what's really happened. It's all happened behind closed doors. So it is also conceivable because Leslie Abramson has successfully argued this case of like abuse being the reason for murder, successfully, very, very recently before this case, and seen it succeed in a court of law, presumably a sat behind the

scenes with the brothers like like give me fucking something. And they're like, don't know, don't know what to say. He's a piece of shit who made me work too hard and I was not very good at tennis and he wanted me to be better and I was never going to be president. And she's like, right, how about this? And could she have planted the idea in Eric and he just repeats it to her? We don't know. We don't know. So taking it all with a pinch of salt and just repeats it to her. We don't know. We don't know. So

taking it all with a pinch of salt and just putting it out there that we do not know. Yeah, I mean, it's solid gold for her. It could potentially save our clients from the death penalty. And it also provided a startling new insight into the Menendez family that was beyond anything previously considered by investigators and those who knew Jose and Kitty while they were alive and even those who knew their sons. And that silver spoon in Lyle and Eric's mouths was looking pretty rusty. So let's meet the real Menendez's. Yeah, according at least to the story that Lyle and Eric tell. In Jose, many people saw a hot-blooded Latin man who wanted the best for his

American-born sons. They didn't look or perhaps didn't want to look any deeper than that. The patriarch was clearly a tough taskmaster. That much was obvious to the tennis and swimming coaches who witnessed him brutally berating his sons after each and every tournament. One swimming coach in fact recalls how Eric's self-confidence was battered because everything he did was never good enough for Jose, who demanded perfection. And yes, I'm not going to sit here and say that is not incredibly abusive. Of course it is. But then, this was also hardly unusual in the ultra-competitive circles that the Menendezes ran in. A woman named Sena Hamilton, who's founder of Miami's Easter Bowl Junior

Tennis Tournament, remarked that many sports parents' behaviour is, quote, on the edge of child abuse. Saying that if that alone was the reason for murder, we'd be seeing quote wholesale slaughter in the US juniors. I believe that. Me too. But according to Eric, Jose's demanding nature was just the tip of the iceberg. Behind the gates of their Beverly Hills mansion in the 80s, far darker secrets were tearing the Menendez family apart. In a series of faltering confessions, Eric told Lesley that Jose began sexually abusing him when

he was just six years old. And that abuse lasted until he was 18 and only ended when Jose died. While Lyle found it even tougher to admit, he ultimately corroborated Eric's claims and admitted that he was also abused between the ages of six and eight. They said that sexual boundaries between them and their father Jose were incredibly warped. Apparently history buff Jose allegedly urged the boys to think of themselves as Greek and Spartan warriors who, according to Jose, psyched themselves up for battle by engaging in male bonding rituals. He would bathe his sons after their sports activities, robbing down their muscles and encouraging them to reciprocate. This escalated to include the boys giving Jose what he called mouth massages, oral sex.

And apparently Jose had told the boys that this was just a normal part of a father-son relationship. Jose would make sure to separate the boys when he molested them, and according to them they lacked the vocabulary to talk to each other about it. Lyle admitted that for a time when they were young children, he started playing with Eric in an inappropriate way, using a toothbrush, as he was trying to normalise what his father was doing to him. While Lyle said that he eventually stood up to Jose and told him to stop around the age

of eight, Jose continued to abuse Eric for years without Lyle's knowledge. Eric recalls how, over time, Jose's cruelty intensified when he was alone with him, raping him at the age of 10, taking sadistic pleasure in inserting things into him, and pricking him with sharp objects during abuse sessions. As he reached his late teens, Eric felt utterly powerless to resist his father, acting out his sick urges on a regular basis. By this stage, Jose had stopped pretending that the sex was normal and instead used it as a form of punishment whenever Eric disappointed him. Jose just told Eric to go to his room and wait. And Eric would know what was coming next.

Throughout these confessions made to Leslie Abramson and forensic psychologist Dr William Vickery, both Eric and Lyle still found it hard to talk frankly about their father. They repeatedly described him as a great man, clinging to the legacy that he'd sought to craft while he was still alive, like some familiar myth. Dr. Vickery noted that he believed the Menendez brothers were genuine because their disclosures were like pulling teeth. In contrast to when people are lying about abuse, they tend to reveal everything straight away because they're so keen to be believed. Lyle and Eric had spent so long lying about Jose that, according to this doctor, finally being honest was a huge adjustment. And this culture of fear

and silence had meant that the brothers had never fully disclosed the abuse to their extended family members, although certain things had allegedly slipped through the cracks. And this is one of those. So the brother's cousin, Diane, remembers being a teenager when eight-year-old Lyle had asked her if he could touch her down there, revealing that he and his dad did that together. Diane told her Aunt Kitty, who insisted this was a lie, and the incident was swiftly swept under the rug. Eric also apparently confided in another cousin, Andy Cano, about weird sexual stuff that would happen between him and his dad, trying to check if this was a normal father-son thing. But Eric had begged Andy not to tell anyone, so Andy had kept

it a secret. So that's Hozo. What about Kitty? Her sons claimed that her mental health had been unravelling for years. She drank heavily and proudly called her chosen poison cognac a high class drink. And it's disgusting. She would take 13 different prescription medications to get through the day, including… Mommy's Little Helper, Xanax. Kitty was hospitalised multiple times for overdoses, but always checked herself out. Kitty's paranoia and jealousy over Jose's many affairs consumed her.

She tracked down his mistresses, stalked them and hired private investigators quite a few times. And reportedly she freely told people that she didn't love her sons, especially Lyle. She'd never been that close with him. She was more protective over Eric, but deep down she resented the pair of them, because they'd stolen Jose from her. Motherhood had cost her everything, her career, her body, her marriage, and she repeatedly warned her niece Diane that children can drive a wedge between husband and wife. And according to the brothers, Jose wasn't the only one who displayed sexually inappropriate behaviour during their childhood. When they were kids, Kitty allegedly showed the boys photos of her in lingerie and swimsuits and asked them if they thought she looked good.

The boys claimed that she'd also often walk around topless and naked in front of them. Eric says that between the ages of 11 and 13, Kitty would invite him to sleep in her bed and once even asked her to touch her everywhere. The boundaries at home, according to the brothers, was so twisted that young Eric and La used to fight over who got to sleep in their mum's bed when Jose was away on business. In contrast to Jose's rigid and controlling nature, the brothers felt that their mum Kitty was out of control. She was emotionally volatile, exploding into fits of rage, seemingly out of nowhere.

Lyle described Kitty as being totally unpredictable, consistent only in one thing, how much she hated him. She constantly slammed Lyle's girlfriends, she called them bimbos and gold diggers etc. She also had quite an intense paranoia about STDs in the house, labelling a model that Lyle dated in 1989 as a slut who probably had AIDS, and he claimed that she made him eat off paper plates for weeks. In another bizarre move, Kitty allegedly ordered Eric to get a girlfriend within six months and took an obsessive interest in his sex life.

By 1989, Lyle and Eric felt like their mother was spiralling toward total self-destruction. According to them, she once threatened to kill the whole family by poisoning their food. And apparently, after that, Jose didn't trust her cooking and often took the boys out to eat instead. Kitty reportedly bought several guns, which also alarmed her sons. They apparently also found suicide notes in the house and feared that she might take her own life, and all theirs. The power dynamic in the house and feared that she might take her own life, and all theirs. The power dynamic in the house, according to Lyle and Eric, had shifted. Even Jose, once an unshakable force, seemed intimidated by Kitty and did everything he could to placate

her moods. Apart from shagging his secretary, obviously. Yes. Off the table. Yes. No way, Jose. Lyle later summed this all up by saying, she seemed to be very mad at the world. Whatever had been really going on for the last few weeks of Jose and Kitty Menendez's

lives, the house on North Elm Drive was like a pressure cooker. And with each painstaking notch of the dial, something was going to have to give. The first notch came when Eric discovered that Jose had paid a chunk of money to UCLA, where he was due to start college, to avoid the requirement for him to live on campus. And that meant that Eric would be stuck in the Menendez mansion at his father's mercy. LWX And you could read that as Jose just being like, I want to keep you here because I am abusing you and I don't want you to escape my clutches. But you could also read it as

Eric was the one that was part of that fucking bling ring style like theft gang. And he's like, I need to keep you where I can keep a fucking eye on you. Like it could be both. It could be either. Like, we just don't know. The second notch, during a heated argument, Kitty lunged at Lyle and ripped off his expensive hairpiece. That scene, like I did watch Ryan Murphy's Monsters. I did watch it. And yeah, that scene is just like, what the fuck? I mean, being bald at 18 is however old he is. Yeah. did watch it. And yeah, that scene is just like, what the fuck?

I mean, being bald at 18 is however old he is. Yeah, he's like, too young to be bald. But he'd been bald from like his late teens. I mean, that's gonna take a chunk out of you. Yeah. And so does Kitty when she pulls it off. Yes, she did. As Lyle screamed in pain, Erik gaped in shock at his brother's bald shiny bonce. Because even Eric, even his brother, didn't know that Lyle had been wearing a toupee for years. Over two years, in fact. He'd started to go baldy in high school. And his father

made things much worse by insisting that the hair loss had to be covered up immediately because a politician needs good hair. Literally trying to think of one bald president, can't do it. Was Winston Churchill bald? President. Yeah, I was just thinking politicians. No, I'm sticking with the American. The whole heart, the whole all American dream. Yeah, we've got loads of all these.

Yeah, we have. We're more concerned with ancestral wealth than we are with coiffure. In the aftermath of the rug pulling, the boys claim that they lamented to each other how secrets were tearing their family apart and Eric confessed to Lyle that the sex stuff with their dad was still happening to him. The next crank came when Lyle supposedly blurted out to Kitty that Jose was abusing Eric to which she oddly scoffed that she wasn't stupid and she'd always known. And finally the last straw, according to the Menendez brothers. A shaking Lyle

confronted Jose warning him to stay away from Eric or he would tell everyone the truth. Jose cryptically responded that Lyle had made his choice and now Jose would have to make his. Lyle says that he took this the only way he knew how, as a threat. Because by this point, according to Lyle and Eric, they were convinced that their parents would kill them before the abuse could be revealed. So they decided to arm themselves with their own protection. Two days before the killings, on Friday the 18th of August 1989, the brothers drove to

a sporting goods store in San Diego on a mission. Which I would like to point out is quite far. Eric purchased them two 12 gauge shotguns using a fake ID that in fact belonged to Lyle's former roommate back in Princeton, a guy named Donovan Goodrow. They asked the manager for advice on ammo, who recommended buckshot over birdshot if they, quote, really wanted to stop a person. That night, the boys say that they hid their loaded guns under their beds, preparing themselves for an attack. But the next day came with a surprise. Jose and Kitty dragged their sons out

for a family shark fishing trip from Marina Del Rey. Swimming in paranoia, the boys said that they were convinced their parents had nefarious motives for the seemingly wholesome outing. I mean, killing sharks isn't my wholesome but fine. The boys claimed that they were terrified that Jose and Kitty would push them overboard and feed them to the sharks or perhaps stage some sort of tragic accident to stop their dirty secrets coming out. Unarmed and panicking the brothers said that they were literally at sea. But the boat's captain Bob Anderson didn't notice too much out of the

ordinary, just your average snooty rich family with sulky grown-up kids who wanted to avoid their parents at all costs. And in the end, nothing happened. By Sunday evening though, the final night of Jose and Kitty Menendez's lives, the pressure cooker finally exploded. Eric says that during a blistering row involving the whole family, Jose told him to go to his bedroom and wait for him. Something that he says was a euphemism for rape. But then the boys claim that Jose suddenly pulled Kitty into the family room and shut the doors behind them. And that door shutting, according to Lyle and to Eric, could only mean one thing. Their parents were going to kill them. Lyle screamed, it's happening now, and told Eric that they had to grab their guns.

Moments later, Lyle and Eric Menendez brutally shot their parents to death. This, at least, is an undeniable fact. But was anything else they said true? And if so, would the circumstances around the crime have an impact on their punishment? And perhaps more importantly, should it? That our friends is a whole other story, one we will dive into next week with the trials of Erika and Laman and Des. So you should have to stay tuned.

Yeah. Yeah. May peace be with you. Uh huh. Take care. You'll find out what we think about what they have said. Yeah. And all I will say before everybody loses their mind about what opinion you have

and maybe what we've sort of talked about this episode is it's really fucking hard to tell the story in a balanced, nuanced way. Because you have to keep saying allegedly for everything they're saying. It's not to say that I don't think that possibly could have happened. Like I said, we'll talk about if it did happen what my opinion is on the impact that that should have on the brothers, but also we don't have any evidence for it. And the pressure cooker situation, I think some of the stuff they're saying is definitely true about arguments, things like this pressure building up, but also remember the things they tell us outside of this. They knew that their father was thinking about changing the will. That's also what this argument

could have been about. The threat, the immediate threat that Lyle and Eric, particularly Lyle, could have been thinking they were facing was being disinherited, not being about to be murdered. So we just don't know. We just don't know, but we'll talk about it more next week. So we'll see you then. See you then. Bye. I'm not sure.