True Crime with Kendall Rae - The Menendez Brothers: Killers or Victims?

Episode Date: June 14, 2022

This episode is sponsored by: Magic Spoon - promo code: KENDALLRAE Check out Kendall's other podcasts: The Sesh & Mile Higher Follow Kendall! YouTube Twitter Instagram Facebook Mile Higher Zoo REQUESTS: General case suggestion form: https://bit.ly/32kwPly Form for people directly related/ close to the victim: https://bit.ly/3KqMZLj Discord: https://discord.com/invite/an4stY9BCN CONTACT: For Business Inquiries - [e-mail]

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$60,000 price is for a thousand square foot two-bedroom two-bath barn dochelle to be built on purchased slotted buckridge and equal housing opportunity. Hey guys, welcome back to my channel. So for this week's video, we're going to be looking at a case that is very famous, also very, very highly requested. From you guys, I get messages about this all the time, tweets, comments on Instagram, and of course many of you have submitted it to my actual case suggestion form, which I so appreciate when you do that, it helps me keep it all a little more organized. Today we're going to be talking about the Mnendis brothers, and this case is really wild.

It honestly kind of plays out like a movie. It's a little bit of an older case. It took place in the 80s, but it has kind of gotten a resurgence in publicity lately, mainly on TikTok, which has been really interesting. Feel like many people who may have experienced watching this all play out back when it was taking place might feel different about the case now looking at it with fresh eyes. It's a very controversial case. I'm sure you guys will have plenty of opinions. Of course, leave them below. I love hearing what you guys have to say about these cases. But this isn't one that I think many people are on the fence about. They are either on one side or the other side. There is a lot to go over here today, so let's go ahead and dive right in to Menendez family. So their story really begins with the patriarch of their family, their father

Jose and reggae Menendez, who was born on May 6th, 1944 in Havana, Cuba. His father was a former soccer star, and his mother was a former champion swimmer. And Jose really took after his parents. He was very competitive, he was athletic, and he normally got first place. He was very successful in all the sports that he did, basketball, soccer, swimming. When Jose was about 15 years old in 1960, things got really crazy in Cuba.

But El Castro had taken complete control of the military and political power and was now Cuba's prime minister. Jose's parents felt like it wasn't safe for him there so they ended up sending him to the United States when he was just 15. So he came here alone and his parents decided to stay in Cuba to try to protect what they had left. They had a lot of their properties seized by the regime but they were hoping that they could protect a few so they had stay there, but they sent him alone to the US. And at first he lived in his cousin's attic. It was definitely a hard adjustment for him, but luckily for him he had sports still, so that was kind of a sense of

normalcy, and eventually he got a scholarship for swimming. So he ended up going to Southern Illinois University, and in 1962 he met Mary Louise Anderson, who went by the nickname Kitty. Kitty was just a few years ahead of him at S.I.U. and she was born in 1941. She grew up in Chicago and she was a former beauty Patrick Queen. So he was very attracted to her.

They headed off right away and started dating. By 1963, Kitty ended up graduating from S.I.U. and Jose decided that he was just done with school and he decided to leave when she graduated. He was just 19 years old at the time and they actually decided to go and alo. After this, they moved to New York where Kitty was a teacher for a little while and Jose ended up enrolling in Queens College in Flushing. He decided he was pretty good with numbers so he was going to get his degree in accounting and during that he worked as a dishwasher part time. Eventually Jose and Kitty got pregnant with their first child and it was a boy. His name was

Joseph Lyle Menendez. He was born in New York on July 10th 1968 and they ended up calling him Lyle for short. At this point, Katie decided to quit her full-time teaching job because she wanted to get full-time mom instead, and she was very excited to be a mom. Eventually, the city became a little too much for them, so Jose decided to move the family to New Jersey. Specifically, they moved to Blackwood, New Jersey, which is a small, unincorporated community. And then on November 27th of 1970, they had their second son, Eric. And around this time, he had a big shift in his career path. He ended up going into the music industry, so very different from accounting. But he really liked music,

and he liked money, so he decided to make the switch to the music industry. And this was a good move for him, because by the 1980s, he was a top executive with RCA records. He signed several really popular groups, the most popular being Durand Durand. The family moved to a million dollar estate in Princeton, New Jersey, and both boys attended Princeton Day School,

which is a very prestigious and top rated private school. And as soon as the boys were old enough to walk and talk, the expectations were set for them that they need to be successful. They need to excel in academics, in athletics, and they weren't the kind of parents that were okay with trying at a sport and just having fun with it and getting the consolation trophy.

Now, they wanted their kids to be best of the best. So one sport that they got really into and they were very good at was tennis. Both of them were exceptional tennis players, actually. They spent a lot of money in training and classes and all that. And their mom, Kitty, was like their cheerleader. She was always at every practice, every game,

cheering them on. And at this time, from the outside, it looked like they were living a very comfortable and happy life. In 1986, Jose decided that he wanted to leave the music industry and get into the movie industry instead. So of course, where do you gotta go if you're gonna be in the movie industry?

Hollywood. So he packs up the whole family, and they all head to California. In 1987, Jose started a new job working for live entertainment, which was a newly formed company that was already in trouble. Just to give you an idea, the company had lost over $20 million dollars the previous year. So they were really not doing great. So Kenny was a little nervous, you know, making this cross country move to this failing company.

But Jose was confident that he could swoop in and save the business. And it worked because his first year he increased the profits by eight million dollars and the second year he increased them by double that, sixteen million dollars. And he was known for doing whatever it takes using some pre-rufless business tactics, but it definitely paid off for him because eventually he was named at CEO. And when he started that position, his salary was $500,000 per year, with an additional up to $860 million in bonuses. So the company took out insurance policies, life insurance policies, on all of the

top executives out the company. Live entertainment took one out on Jose obviously and they actually made themselves the beneficiary which I guess is pretty common practice for large corporations. But they also had a second policy for employees that was worth $5 million and for this one they could have anyone as the beneficiary. and for this one, they could have anyone as the beneficiary. DQ presents Picture this. You're getting together with all your best friends. Now picture all your best friends

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or counting your breaths on the subway. Peloton is for all of us, wherever we are whenever we need it. Download the free Peloton app today, Peloton app available through free tier, or page description starting at 12.99 per month. I work Jose was really applauded and praised by the people at the top,

but everyone that worked under Jose really fucking hated him. In fact, it's safe to say he was despised by people he worked with. He had a horrible reputation with women as well. He could be aggressive. He was very intimidating, cut throat, ruthless. He didn't hesitate to reprimand or straight up fire

anyone in the company that made even a slight mistake. And he was also known for some pretty shady business practices to kind of inflate the worth of the company. And not only was he an asshole at work, he was also having several affairs with people that he worked with. And a lot of them weren't just little hookups, they were full blown affairs, long-term relationships that were going on behind Katie's back.

However, it is assumed that Kitty probably knew that this was going on and just turned a blind eye because he was making a lot of money and she wanted to keep the family together. So it's possible she knew, but we'll never know for sure. But even though she probably had a gut feeling that all of this was going on or might have straight up known about it,

she still made an effort to be as involved in his life as she could be. She insisted that she went on business trips with him because she didn't trust him. And Jose worked a ton. He went on business trips all the time. So that was kind of their way of spending time together. He was go-go-go work as hard as you can be a successful as you can. Now here's one very strange detail about Jose. he was ashamed of his Cuban heritage. At one point he was offered a letter of congratulations on his success as a Hispanic businessman and he was offended by it. He didn't want any of his colleagues to

know about his past where he came from or even where he went to school because he was ashamed that he didn't go to an Ivy League University and he was determined to have all of his kids go to an Ivy League University and he was determined to have all of his kids go to an Ivy League school. So clearly the boys were dealing with a lot of pressure just being Jose's sons. He decided when his boys were pretty young that they were going to go to Princeton. So at this time their family was living in Califbasses. This is where I believe some of the Kardashians live.

I'm not completely sure. It's a very fancy area. I've driven through it once. And they were really living, you know, the American dream. They rented a house while they were building their dream home, which was actually on the top of the mountain. And it was on 13 acres of land. And on the outside looking in,

they seemed like they had the perfect life. The American dream. They seemed like a picture perfect close happy family and the parents were super involved in the kids lives. They were always at their sporting events very involved in who they were dating and their academics, especially Kitty. They had hoped that the boys would excel in schools, as much as they did in tennis, but that wasn't the case. They did more average in school, They weren't bad students by any means,

but they weren't like top of the class or anything. But they were really excelling at tennis, especially Eric. He ended up breaking 44th in the nation for 18 and under players. And as they were growing up, they were very, very, very close. Lyall was very protective of his younger brother, Eric, and they did a lot of things together. They spent a ton of time together. They had a couple friends here and there, but they really stayed at closest with each other, and several people who were friends with them said that they got interesting vibes from the boys at times. Some of their past friends felt betrayed by them, or double crossed by them. They kind of grew up having to learn to be very sneaky and aggressive

and get what she wants. This is what they learned from their dad. Now, Lyle definitely had a harder time in the family than Eric did. There was a lot more expectation on him, just a lot more pressure in general to succeed and to set a good example. And I'm sure some of you who are the first born in your family can relate to this. I know I definitely can. I think the first born definitely has more expectations than the younger siblings. His father was pretty brutal on him. We'll talk a lot more about this actually but one of the things that he would do to Lyle a lot was shame him about his physical appearance and one thing that he was very insecure about was the fact that he was going bald at age 14.

And his father forced him to wear a toupee. That's how concerned he was with their image. He didn't want to have any imperfections in his children. And the boys definitely grew up learning that money is everything in life. It's all about getting as far as you can, being first place, being the most successful and making the most money. You could definitely consider these two brats, you know, it was their environment, but

they had no cause of the money. Like when Lyell started driving, he wanted a Porsche right away, and his dad actually decided to have a little restraint and said no to the Porsche, but the boys both definitely struggled with confidence issues at the end of the day even though they were nationally ranked tennis players they never felt good enough for their father. Eric really started to struggle with it more as he got older and eventually he started to rebel a little bit and started hanging out with the wrong crowd you can say. Eric eventually started bringing Lyle around with them and they all started hanging out with the wrong crowd, you could say. Eric eventually started bringing Lyall around with them and they all started hanging out in a big group. And one particular time,

they were all hanging out and they decided that they wanted to do something rebellious. So they decided to break into a friend's home and steal what was in their safe. One of Eric's friends actually had the combination and so Eric Lyallyle, this friend, whoever else went over to another friend's house, stole their jewelry, money, whatever else was in the safe. And obviously these guys are rich. Like, why do you need to do this? For them, it was really about the rush of it all, you know, it was the excitement. After that, they decided to plan another break-in into a different house with their friend and after they did this Eric and Lyle decided they really liked the thrill of it all and they decided they wanted to do their own break in without the friend

At a different house and this wasn't just breaking in as a little prank Maybe stealing something small they ended up stealing over $100,000 from this person. And they actually almost got away with it, which was very exciting for them, but then their friend, the one they cut out of the deal, it hooked them up with the code for the first robbery, decided to wrap them out, because they did not include him in the second robbery. And what's really interesting about all this is, of course, their parents found out that they had done this because they were turned into the police. But Jose was not angry that they committed this crime. He was an angry that they stole. He was angry that they got

caught. He thought his son should be smarter than that, tougher than that. And so he was disappointed in them. And it turns out he actually knew that the boys had been doing things like this. There were a couple other houses that they broke into. Did some minor things at and he would go and try to pay them off, get them not to report it to the police. But he wasn't able to in this situation. And that's what he was upset about. That they all got caught. The boys ended up claiming that it was just a joke. They ended up paying back the $100,000 and they also paid an additional $11,000 in damages. Then Jose came up with a plan to keep the boys out of jail.

Lyle was an adult and he was about to start Princeton. So Jose decided that since Eric was under age, he would plead guilty to the entire thing, all of the burglaries that they had been involved in, and take the fall. So Lyle was just given a slap on the wrist, basically, and Eric had to take the punishment. But it wasn't that bad. He just had to do some community service and get some therapy, which was good for him. This is when he was sent to Dr. L Jerome Ozeal, and he started to seem Eric regularly. Around the same time, the family decided that they were going to move to Beverly Hills into a famous mansion and this place is very fancy. It's a four million dollar six-bedroom Mediterranean-style mansion on Elm Drive. It has a courtyard, a tennis court, a

pool, a guest house, and a lot of things people have actually lived in this house including Michael Jackson, Elton John, and a Saadi Prince. So when they moved in, of course, they were feeling really good about themselves. They felt like they really made it. They had the perfect life, or so it seemed. And to make it even more perfect, Lyle, their first son ended up getting into Princeton like they had hoped. He ended up deciding to study business because his dad encouraged him to do that, follow his footsteps. But once he got to school, it really was not his jam. During his freshman year, he was put on academic probation for his poor grades. He was pretty much not even going to class. He got really into the parties and

the social life of college. And then it all really came crashing down for him when he got caught plagiarizing in his psychology class. And normally when the boys got in trouble, Jose would come in and try to see if he could work the system, maybe write a check, get the amount of trouble. So he tried to do this, but the dean of the school was not having it. So Lyle ended up being suspended for a whole year. And this really pissed off Jose, but he wasn't mad at Lyle. No, of course not, he was mad at the university for expelling him. So as you can see, Lyle and Eric were never held responsible for anything. Everything was

everyone else's fault at all times, and he was all about how can you cheat the system. So Jose ended up hugging his son up with a job at live entertainment. He was hoping that his son could just slide in, and maybe he would work his way up the ladder the way that he did. But this was not reality. Lyle hated this job, and he was a terrible worker. Most days he came in late, acted like he didn't really give a shit, would walk around the office talking to people barely doing any work, and he would normally clock out early to go and play tennis. Co-workers said that working with him was a nightmare. It was clear that he was only working there

because his father got him the job and not because he actually cared about the business in any way. But eventually this all caught up with him and even having his dad as the CEO was not enough to save his job and he was fired from live entertainment. Meanwhile, Eric was still in high school. He was playing tennis, he was also acting, and he actually won a prize for best actor. So he was really thriving. He was also really into writing, and he and his friend Craig spent a lot of time writing together. And the two of them actually co-wrote a screenplay together, and he was called Friends. No, not that friends. It was actually a story about a young man who murdered his parents to inherit all of their money. Now, Kitty was really into her son's work. She was very proud of his writing and everything

that he was doing. However, Jose didn't show much interest in it. So, it was really hard for Eric. You know, he never felt like he was good enough for his dad. And it wasn't just like Jose would, you know, ignore his son's achievements and wasn't that excited for him. He was straight up disappointed in how the boys turned out. He didn't think they were good enough at all. He was super disappointed in Lyle because he dropped out of school because he failed at the job that he had given him and he was disappointed in Eric too. And it seemed like he was even considering taking them out of his well. We're not sure if maybe he was planning on taking them out altogether or maybe altering it a little

bit so they would get their money when they were a little older and more responsible. So there was a lot of tension between them all. A lot more than anyone even could have possibly known at the time. And that brings us to August 19th, 1989. On that day Jose and Kitty had charted a yacht called the Motion Picture Marine, and they took Lyle and Eric shark fishing in the Marina Del Rey. At this time, Lyle was 21, and Eric was 18. They all set sail that morning on the yacht, the entire Menenda's family, their crew, their captain, and the captain's girlfriend. And the crew specifically noticed that that day,

the family seemed off. There seemed to be a disconnect between them. They didn't spend much time together on the yacht. They didn't seem to talk much at all. The two boys ended up distancing themselves from Kitty and Jose. They went and sat on a different side of the boat than them. And didn't seem to want to be around their parents at all. The next day was August 20th, and their maid was off. They had a maid, and she did not work on Sundays. The boys ended up deciding to go see a movie

together that night and Jose and Kitty decided to watch their own movie at home in their den. The den is the back of the house. It's very dark cozy and they were eating some vanilla ice cream strawberries and just lounging around. Kitty was in her sweats and they're just watching their movie in the den. Having their ice cream. When all of a sudden at 10 p.m. Eric and Lyle burst through the doors with guns and the two of them were obviously completely shocked to see their kids standing there with shotguns in front of them. And they started shooting right away. They both walked in and Lyle didn't hesitate at all. He shot his dad in the back of the head. He was a Mossberg 12 gauge shotgun, so it did a lot of damage. And the plan was for Eric to shoot his mother,

but he was panicking and Lyle ended up having to do it for him because she almost escaped the room. She ran out trying to get help. She ran over the sofa out of the door and down the hallway and that's where Lyle ended up shooting her. At first he shot her in the leg at close range and it was so powerful, it shattered her leg bone. They continued to shoot at them until they were out of ammunition completely, but Kitty was still alive. She was just laying on the floor. So the two of them went outside to reload their guns and while they were outside, Kitty tried to get up and she slipped in her own blood and fell to the ground. When they got back, they continued shooting and they shot her in the face, which killed her.

Eric actually shot her twice to make sure she was really dead. She was shot a total of 10 times in her leg, in her arm, in her chest, and of course her face, and she was completely unrecognizable. It was brutal. Jose's death was brutal too. He was shot six times. He had a hole in the back of his head, the sides of a fist. That's how big because it was so close range. They had unloaded a total of 15 rounds and they decided to make it look like a mob hit. So they ended up shooting both of their parents one more time in their knees, also known as a kneecapping. Jose was 45 years old when he died and Kitty was 47 and then at 1147 a call came into dispatch from Lyle. What's the problem? That's all I do, my parents.

Why me? It's the person. Who is the person that do the shot? Lyle, what are you doing? You want me to get it out? I want you to get it out. So it actually took officers a while to get to the scene. It's weird. The boys expected police to be there extremely quick as soon as the gunshots went off

practically. They lived close to neighbors and they figured someone had to call the police. Plus there were officers you know patrolling in their fancy rich neighborhood. This kind of stuff doesn't happen there. They thought that the gunshots would attract a bunch of police but they were shocked when they went out of the house And we're just waiting there and no one showed up and the cops of course they did show up But it just wasn't as quick as you would expect officers who were there said the two of them came out of the house hysterically screaming they seemed really traumatized Eric collapsed onto the lawn and curled up in a ball

He was shaking hyper hyperventilating, and just screaming uncontrollably. According to officers, Lyle was trying to comfort him, but was also hysterical. The officers who were there said their grief seemed genuine. They seemed heartbroken, petrified. Like someone had really come in and murdered

their parents, even though it was them. So then they go inside and it is a horror scene. The den is covered in blood, the ice cream bowls are spilled, and then their two bodies are there, just figured, because they had been shot so many times, they were unrecognizable. When I walked into the room, and, you know, the television was on, and, you know, there was blood and body parts all over the place. So, of course, they started their investigation with the boys, talking to them, where were you guys tonight? And they had been at the movie theaters. They said they originally had tried to see a license to kill, but that was sold out, so they ended up going to Batman instead.

Then, after this, they said they went to the Taste of the LA Festival and came home to the scene. And police found them to be very credible. They believed their whole story so much so that they decided to not even test their hands for gunshot residue. Which is very weird because that's normally just standard procedure for anyone who's in a crime scene or near a crime scene Where there's guns involved but they were so moved by the emotions that the boys were having that they just figured there was no way They had any involvement in this this was somewhere in them hit and it was probably mob related because of their kneecaps and the boys really pushed this story They thought it made a lot of sense too. They said that their father had some connections possibly to organize crimes. There's people out there that would wanna see him dead.

But as detectives started to look into the mob theory a little more and analyze the crime scene, they felt like the mob theory just didn't actually check out. The main reason being that this crime was messy and it looked personal. Normally with a mob hit they come in, they shoot the person in the head, they do it as quick as possible and leave behind as little blood as possible. But this was a blood bath. Plus they figured that kitty probably would have been kept alive because she wouldn't have been the target. Plus they figured that there were plenty of other people that could have done this, that hated Jose.

In his career, he had be little, humiliated, and fired tons of people. There were plenty of people who would be seeking revenge on him. They interviewed several co-workers and ex-employees, but nothing panned out. No one seemed like they were that angry at Jose. I mean, don't give me

wrong, plenty of people hated his guts, but not enough to kill him. And when people found out in the community that Jose and Kitty had been killed, they were pretty shocked, especially about Kitty's murder, because she was known as a really friendly, well-liked person. To everyone she seemed like a loving mother, a devoted wife, why would anyone want to kill her in such a brutal way? But no one thought that it could have been Eric and Lyle that did this and they were sticking to their story. They acted incredibly devastated by the loss of their parents and also very scared. They started living out of hotels right away, claiming that they were afraid

that whoever did this to their parents would come back and kill them. They ended up getting bodyguards and started wearing bulletproof vests. But they also started taking advantage of the money right away. They started spending their parents' wealth immediately. August 24th, literally the day before their parents' funeral, Lyle ended up buying three Rolex watches. They showed up to the funeral, all decked out brand new shoes as well,

and they showed up late. And the boys weren't acting very odd. A few people noted this, especially Lyle. He started making like casual jokes about his father about filling his shoes, because he had new shoes. He was casually talking to another friend about how they could get tickets to the US open and people thought that was strange.

And it was a big funeral. There were like 200 people there, but very few of these people were actually their friends. Jose and Katie didn't really have them any friends. They didn't attend a lot of social events or parties. So a lot of these people were just people that worked with Jose, probably people that didn't even like him.

Then they also had a second funeral service a few days later and this time, Lyle gave one of the eulogies and he talked about how much he loved his father and how he was so proud of him and would miss him so much. But they didn't seem that sad after the funeral. Like the spending spree just continued right away.

Lyle ended up buying a Chuck Spring Street Cafe restaurant in Princeton for $550,000. He also bought himself that Porsche he always wanted, which was $60,000. He ended up renaming his restaurant Mr. Buffalo's and he was all about the new business life. He even decided to start a new company called Menendez Investment Enterprises. He hired some friends from Princeton that he knew and he also planned to Franchise the restaurant so he was making a lot of moves in the business world Eric was also spending a lot of money not quite as much as liable But still a lot he bought himself a brand new cheap Wrangler and he also started paying for a private tennis coaching

And his tennis coach charged like $50,000 a year So it was a pretty big deal and they decided to keep living in the house they just rented some new furniture to replace the blood soaked furniture in the living room. At one point they thought they might move out they were going to put down a deposit on a $900,000 penthouse but they decided against it. Instead they leased to adjoining condos in Marina Del Rey and they threw a bunch of parties there. And during all of this the mansion was just sitting there empty. You know it was a reminder for them.

They didn't really want to go there anymore. It was scary. It reminded them of what they did. And at this point the only two that knew who really killed Jose and Kitty were Lyle and Eric. They continued to spend money. I think it was also a way of distracting themselves from the stress they were feeling from committing a murder. They bought themselves really expensive wardrobe, Eric eventually bought himself over Rolex. Those three Rolexes that Lyle bought were just for himself. So Eric had to buy his own. Eric also got really into gambling and he ended up losing a lot of money that way.

And he ended up changing his original plan, which was to go to UCLA for tennis. And he decided to go do these competitions in the Middle East and he did that for a little while. Eric was actually hoping to go pro in tennis. That's how much he loved it. We hired an Olympic weight training coach for them. We had a complete nutritional profile done on them. They had their volume of oxygen uptake measured, their flexibility, obviously strength, all of these things were measured. They acted like everything was normal,

like they didn't just murder their parents recently. They were driving around in Kitty's Mercedes Benz as if all was good. And as time went on, they just continue to spend more and more and more and Six months after their parents were murdered they had spent over $700,000 which is equal to about 1.5 million dollars in today's money. They just started spending money and that just didn't seem Like the way to grieve over the loss of your parents is to start spending their money.

And they were going to be inheriting a lot of money. Jose was worth about $14 million plus. They also were going to get the $5 million from that second life insurance policy. And Eric and Lyle were going to inherit all of this. And they probably would have spent more than they did in that first six months, but they didn't have access to all of it yet. It had to be settled through Jose's estate. And you're probably wondering why no one was suspecting them, you know?

It looks a little weird with how much they are spending and thriving after their parents were just murdered. And you would be right. Detectives were starting to catch on. They started realizing that the two of them had a huge financial motive for committing this crime. Plus, the longer time went on, the boys seemed less and less interested in the investigation. They would never call and check in to see if they were any closer to figuring out who killed their parents. They didn't seem concerned about it at all.

They certainly weren't acting the way you typically would if your parents had just been killed. So they looked a little closer at the boys and that's when they realized that they had purchased guns on August 18th. So two days before their parents were killed, they used a stolen ID to purchase the guns and then they brought them home. Then they found out that the boys had also hired a computer expert to completely erase their family's hard drive. This was important too because they believed that Jose had the most updated versions of his will on the computer.

So police ended up talking with Eric's friend Craig, who was the one that he played tennis with, and they were working on writing that script together as well. And so they asked him to go to lunch with Eric and he did. It was November 17th he asked him to go to lunch and they did like normal but Eric seemed very nervous, very anxious. Craig kept kind of poking at him, you know, what's going on? Why are you acting funny and eventually Eric just can't fast everything to Craig. He really trusted Craig and he told him how the plan was for a Lyle to shoot his dad and how he was tasked

with shooting his mom. He explained though that he couldn't do it and he could not bring himself to actually shoot his mom so Lyle shot his mom as well. But they did not have a recording device for this lunch. So they asked Craig to go with Eric again and get the confession out of him again this time wearing the recording device. He wore a wire and then he also had a calculator

where they were recording device inside of it that he was holding underneath the table. And Craig asked him again about how he killed his parents, but this time he denied it. He said that they didn't do it. He explained that he should have never told Craig that and that it was made up and he and Lyle never killed anybody. So then they started talking to the family's therapist. Kitty wasn't therapy as well. And it turns out that Kitty actually told her therapist that she was afraid of her sons

that she thought they were sociopaths. It turns out she was so afraid of them that she was locking herself in her bedroom at night. And after the murder first happened, Eric continued to see his therapist, Dr. Ozeal. According to Dr. Ozeal, around this time, the stress and anxiety was really taking the toll on Eric. In fact, he was getting ulcers from all the stress. I can't imagine. And they had these really casual therapy sessions. Dr. Ozeal thought he could really break through to him. I think he was kind of sensing

that they may have been involved. During one of their sessions, they ended up just walking in a park. They had a very casual chat. And then they went back to Dr. Ozeal's office. And when they got there, Eric just kind of leans up against a parking meter and casually says, we did it. Dr. Ozeal was shocked and he brought him into his office and had him explain the whole story. This is where Eric explained that after they murder their parents, they changed into clean clothes. They dumped their shotguns up the road.

They went to the movie theater to get a ticket as their alibi for the night. Dr. Ozeal told him to call Lyall and have him meet him at the office which Lyall had no idea the arrow could just confess everything so he came and met him there and he was just going to kind of talk to them, coach them, be there for them, but he was secretly going to be recording the session and he decided that he was going to have his mistress at the time actually stand outside of the door and kind of listen in just in case anything went

crazy while they were talking and she was ready to call the police at any time. And when Lyall found out that Eric had spelled the beans to Dr. Ozeal, he was pissed. This was not part of the plan. They were supposed to get away with this. And he actually ended up threatening to kill Dr. Ozeal if he told anyone. And instead of going to the police right away, he continued to see the brothers, he continued to have several sessions with them and he recorded all of it.

And they began talking about the murders in more detail. Dr. Ozil was just keeping all of this information until the day that his mistress, her name is Joodle-on, actually went to the police and gave them the information. And she said that she did this because Dr. Ozil was abusive to her and she wanted to kind of get revenge on him. So the police found out that he had confession tapes from the boys and that they were the ones who murdered their parents. So they got a subpoena for the tapes, went and seized them from a safety deposit box that he had

in a bank on venture boulevard, and right away they got word that Lyle might flee the state over this, that he was terrified of getting caught. So they decided that they could waste no time, Lyle clearly knew that the jig was up. So on March 8th 1990, over a dozen police officers actually stopped him as he was pulling out of his driveway. They hadn't get out of the vehicle, laid out on the ground, face down, they handcuffed him, and took him into the police station. It was over. And Eric at the time was actually at a tennis tournament in Israel. We got a call at six in the morning from Lyle's attorney saying, you have to get on an

LL flight immediately and get home. And according to people who were around him when he got the call, he was crying hysterically. He ended up flying to Miami where several of his relatives lived and then his aunt convinced him to fly back to LA and just turn himself in. He surrendered at LAX on March 11, 1990. And they wasted no time.

The charges were filed to get some boys the next day. But it was weird. During the arrangement, the boys didn't look that boys the next day. But it was weird, during the arrangement, the boys didn't look that worried. They came into the Beverly Hills courtroom in fancy outfits and were smiling, they seemed confident. They're Eric Gailan-Menen days. Do you understand the charges against you?

I understand both of you, Anna. Thank you. Mr. Joseph Lyon-Menen days, do you understand the charges against you? And when people found out that the Menendez brothers had been charged with killing their parents, friends and family couldn't believe it. Some of their family members supported them still though. They sat in the front row at trial. Their tennis coach sat in the front row and Eric's girlfriend, even their

grandma sat in the front row, Eric's girlfriend. Even their grandma sat in the front row, Jose's mother and she always believed that the boys were innocent. At their Arraignment the judge explained to them that they were both being charged with killing their parents for financial gain and that they could be facing the death penalty and ask them how they plead and both of them said not guilty. So the defense and prosecution spent a lot of time arguing over whether or not the tapes that Dr. Ziel had recorded

could be admissible in court. Is it fair game because they're murderers or does it fall under Dr. Patient confidentiality? The Supreme Court of California actually made the decision that two out of the three tapes were able to be used in court and one of these tapes had Lyle's confession on it. They determined that because Lyle had threatened Dr. Azale's life, it

forfeits his right to the Dr. Patient confidentiality. And going into the trial, they knew that now that those tapes were going to be fair game, they could not pretend that the tapes were going to be fair game, they could not pretend that the boys didn't commit this crime. They were going to have to have a different strategy. So in July of 93, it was announced for the first time ever that Eric and Lyle had actually killed their parents in self-defense after a lifetime of psychological, physical, and sexual abuse at the hands of their father, and that they killed their mother as well because she allowed it to happen.

We have evidence that will prove that they were experiencing fear, that they were in imminent danger of death or great bodily injury at the hands of their parents. And when this came out, the media went wild. There were so many opinions, many people felt bad for the boys and believed them. Many people thought it was purely a defense strategy. So the trial began 10 days later July 20th, 1993, and they tried them both separately. So, you know, they had two different defense teams, two different juries, and normally they do these at different times, but they decided to do their trials at the same time.

And this was being covered extensively. People could not get enough of this trial. It truly became a drama, a sensation. And there were definitely people that believed they were innocent, and people who believed they were guilty. Eric's friend Craig ended up talking to the media a bunch. He did any interview he could, and he had co-written that friend's screenplay and people who believed they were guilty. Eric's friend Craig ended up talking to the media a bunch. He did any interview he could, and he had co-written that friend's screenplay

with Eric where the main character kills their parents for money. So it seemed like they planned the murder. And the media caught and portrayed Lyle as the older, more dominant brother that kind of convinced Eric to go along with his plan. And they actually made the decision to broadcast the whole trial live on TV for people to watch.

So it became a reality TV show almost. Opening day attracted a dizzying assortment of spectators who descended on the Van Nies courthouse. Girls were lining up at four o'clock in the morning and behaving like Lyle and Eric were rock stars. It was the hottest ticket in town. There were only 10 seats for the press. Inside it was tense and electric as we waited for the brothers to appear. And their grandmother, Maria Menendez, continued to support the boys throughout the entire

trial. And she didn't even think the boys actually killed their parents. She still believed the theory that someone from the mob did it. So when Eric and Lyle walked in to the court room for their first day of trial, they did not look how they did it the arrangement hearing. Their smiles were gone and they seemed worn down, tired, exhausted and they lost weight, they were very pale, they looked very depressed during the proceedings. They just sat there staring blankly ahead according to people who were there and they had a really hard time in jail.

Other prisoners apparently hated them and they had to pay for protection in jail. So they were clearly really hoping that they would be found not guilty. So the prosecution argued that Ergen Lyle killed their parents in order to get financial gain and that they should get the death penalty. And they were sitting there watching television. I don't know. You

don't know what they were doing? I didn't go into the den. Your brother went into the den? Yes. And the television was on? I guess I heard the television, now I don't remember. And they were watching television. I don't know. You mean to tell me after all of these years sir that your brother never told you which your parents were doing when he went in from the kitchen to the family? Are you asking me what I know now or what I knew then? And the defense sought to prove that they were abused, that they were in danger and they had to kill their parents, or their

parents could have killed them. Eric's defense attorney was Leslie Ambrumson, who was a well-known advocate against a death penalty and took on high-profile criminal cases. She was like the best money could buy. She was known for being very tough and kind of a force to be reckoned with in the courtroom. She would break down people until they cried on the witness stand. Now a lot of people think that Leslie purposely dressed the boys a specific way to make them seem younger. Instead of suits, they wore sweaters, colorful sweaters. She argued that even though the

boys seemed like they had a perfect life on the outside, that truly their lives at home were absolute hell. She argued that they were traumatized by all of the abuse, including sexual abuse, that they had gotten from their father. And the sexual abuse that they claimed to have gone through is horrific. They described it all in court, it was very graphic, very shocking, and she explained that Jose would abuse the boys and Kitty would just watch and allow it to happen and never stood up for them. She said Jose was a cool perfectionist whose image was everything to him and that he didn't

really care much about his kids. She argued that he would be the type that would rather kill his kids than have the truth about their family come out. And she explained that Kitty was living in hell as well. Apparently she was an alcoholic, she was a drug addict, and she was buried oppressed over her husband having all these affairs that she knew about.

They said she was so upset, so distressed that she was a hazard to herself, she was a dangerous driver, she was a terrible housekeeper, pretty much a bad mom, and a suicidal mess all behind closed doors. She explained that their life was totally out of control. It was nothing like it seemed.

According to her, it was even messy in the house when they were growing up. There was often feces around the house from their pet ferret. They also had a dog and apparently the dog would go to the bathroom on the carpet, so it was just messy all over the place. And they also brought up that liel had this pet rabbit when he was growing up. And one morning he woke up and the head was

bashed in. And she said that Jose and Kitty did this together. And Lyle was so traumatized by all this that he wet the bed until he was 14. And this is very disturbing, but they claimed that they would take the sheets off the bed after this and put them on the breakfast table in the morning and make him sit and look at them to shame him. Also, they claimed that Kitty had blamed the boys for her not being able to have a successful career in broadcasting. They even said that she had threatened to poison them at one point. So they were afraid of her. And then they made a really shocking claim and said that Kitty had been giving Eric genital exams every year until he was 15. And remember how I explained that liel was balding

and used to wear a toupee? The week before she was murdered, she apparently ripped off his toupee in a fight. And that's how Eric found out that his brother was bald. He didn't even know. And their family was just so full of secrets. And this was kind of a breaking point for them. The two of them started discussing how their family

was toxic. And Eric started telling Lyle everything that his father had been doing to him for years and it's very horrific. And when Lyle found out what had been happening to his brother, he apparently threatened his dad to stop. And he said if he didn't, they would go public. But Jose allegedly responded and said,

he's my son, I'll do whatever I want with him. And that's when they said that the boys knew that they had to do something because they were afraid of their dad. They were afraid maybe he would kill them to prevent this secret from getting out. And they decided to have both of the brothers give testimony at their trials. And I think that was absolutely crucial because when you hear it from them,

it's just so upsetting whether you believe them or not, just the details that they talked about were so shocking and disturbing on so many levels. They gave very graphic descriptions of all of the sexual abuse that both of them had endured and how their father had raped them and used inanimate objects on them. And they recounted all of this on the stand in front of everybody in court and oftentimes they were hysterically crying through their interviews. Did your father have sexual contact with you? interviews. Did your father have sexual contact with you? Yes. And how did it start? It just started with after sports practices. He would massage me. I just told him that I didn't want to do this and that it hurt me and he said that he didn't mean to hurt me. He loved me. Did you tell your mom?

Yes. She told me to stop it. And that I was exaggerating. And that my dad has to punish me when I do things wrong. What if he tell you about telling people? He just said that it was our secret that bad things would happen to me If I told anybody

One of your relatives testified that he witnessed an incident in which your father Removed you from a family gathering took you in your bedroom and struck and and socked you in the stomach And you didn't cry. Do you remember that? Right, okay, and so during the course of your upbringing and socked you in the stomach. And you didn't cry. Do you remember that? Right. And so, during the course of your upbringing, learning how to control your emotions was very important, correct?

Right. Now, in addition to lying to the officers who came to the scene, you then went to the police department for an interview with Sergeant Edmunds. Do you remember that? Yes. And when you saw Sergeant Edmunds, you liked him too, correct? Yes.

Now, at the time that the police arrived at your parents' home, shortly thereafter, a family friend or a friend of yours and your brothers arrived. And that was Mark Heffrinon, correct? Shortly after. At the house, yes. And he accompanied you to the police department. Is that correct?

Or he went in a separate car. Right. And did you lie to him, too? In the sense that we didn't tell him what happened, yes. OK, so you again, to him, portrayed yourself as having been a witness and not a suspect in this crime, correct? Right.

Have you ever tried to end the sex through confrontation or violence against your father? Yes. Yes. You were violent towards your father? No, not violence. No, but I said no to him once. You said no once.

Yes. On that particular occasion, after you said no, did your father become upset? Yes. And did he do anything violent? Yes. You had been well taken care of all your life, and so when your father, through your mother,

said that he was going to disown you, you were worried about that, weren't you? I was not well taken care of my entire life. I had every dime I ever wanted though. That's for sure. But the public had very little sympathy for the boys. They were widely not believed, in fact they were even mocked on Saturday Night Live. And the clip of it is pretty cringe. I don't understand how this was at all funny at any point in time.

Let me ask you once again. Is it your testimony that you and your brother Eric in fact had nothing to do with the murder of your parents Jose and Kitty Menendez? That's correct. fact had nothing to do with the murder of your parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez. That's correct. Then can you tell the court who did murder your parents? Our other two brothers, Danny Menendez and Jose Menendez, Jr. Would you state your names for the court record? Danny Menendez, Jose Menendez Jr.

And you are both sons of Jose and Kitty Menendez. Yes. And you are not Lyle and Eric Menendez pretending to be two different Menendez brothers. No, we are not. And it is your testimony that it was you who killed your parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez brothers. No, we are not. And it is your testimony that it was you who killed your parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, and not your brothers, Lyle and Eric Menendez, to whom you bear a striking resemblance. Yes. And that you forced your two innocent brothers, Lyle and Eric Menendez, to confess to the murder.

Yes. Yes. At one point during the trial they had their female cousin come up and testify that Lyle had actually confided in her as a kid when they were like eight that he was being molested. And one thing that she said in court that was pretty odd really stuck out to me is she said that the boys like to sleep with their mother whenever their father was out of town they would argue over who got to sleep in her bed which I mean a lot of people do that. It's not that weird but they did this until they were 15 when she noted seemed a little odd to her. Their friend Craig who had been talking to the media a lot, had been told to stop talking to the media, been banned from talking to media. And now he was going to be testifying in court. And he testified about how Eric had confessed to the murders 12 days after they happened.

And he also talked about the screenplay that they had written, which kind of was almost premeditating a murder, which they actually did not have the screenplay as evidence in court. They just discussed it, but the jury wasn't able to you know read into it. He said that he went back outside and his brother was standing there with two shotguns and said let's do it and they walked inside and Eric went up to the door on the left which was slightly open and the door on the right, Lyle went up and put a shoulder against the door on the right. Eric said he looked in and saw his parents sitting on the couch. And Lyle swung the door open and shot his father.

And looked at Eric and said, shoot mom. And Eric said he shot his mom as she was standing up and yelling. They also had the computer expert that like the computers come in and testify and he talked about how Erie was being in the house. The coroner showed really graphic pictures of the crime scene to the jury which definitely made them very emotional. And the defense had tried really hard to get them to not show these photos in court. They thought that they were too graphic but they went ahead anyway and they made a big impact. And one thing that kept being brought up in trial was this movie called Billionaire Boys Club.

This came out just three weeks before the murders took place. And Dr. Ozil claimed in court that Eric had mentioned in one of the tapes that was not used in court that this movie inspired the crime, because it was so similar to the way that their parents were killed. It was the story about a group of rich boys and Beverly Hills who killed their father for money. And not only that, the characters wore Rolexes and drew a Jeep Wrangler. This movie was actually released by a live entertainment, Jose's company. Now they weren't able to play the movie in court, but they were able to bring it up

and argue that they could have been inspired by it. So the whole trial was very long. If we went over every detail, we'd be here all day. It lasted four and a half months, but it finally came to a close in January of 94. And the jury actually deliberated for about a month. And this is really interesting, but they were actually split by gender. All of the females on the jury

wanted to acquit and all of the men on the jury wanted to convict. They could not come to a conclusion so they decided to go with a mistrial. Do you do this as at least a partial victory despite not knowing everything about the deadlock? I have very high standards of what's victory

so I don't do a hundred of victory. I'm not going to do a hundred of victory. at least a partial victory, despite not knowing everything about the deadlock. I have very high standards of what's victory. So I don't do 100s of victory. It's not a loss, but it's not a win. I mean, you're still in square one, run around circles. So the LA County District Attorney immediately announced that there would be retrial for both of the boys. The second trial began in October of 1995 and this

time it was just one jury. And this time was different because they decided not to allow the media in. It had become too much of a public circus last time so they wanted to keep it under wraps. In this time the judge decided to not allow them to talk so much about the sexual abuse that the boys had endured. Other than that the arguments that they made were pretty much the same. It was pretty much the same trial repeated. This time, though, the defense really went after Dr. Ozeal and tried to discredit him as much as possible. They said he was a liar and a cheat and just an overall bad guy.

And they claimed that he was planning to use these recordings as blackmail, that he was never going to go to the police. He was going to use these recordings as blackmail. That he was never gonna go to the police. He was going to keep the secret. And blackmail the boys maybe get some money out of them. Who knows? So when he testified this time, it lasted for six days. And this led to two of his mistress filing complaints against him.

And the state also recommended that he lose his license. And the defense was hoping that this would kind of distract the jury from Eric and Lyle. And when Eric testified, it actually lasted several weeks. Apparently, he called his father a killer, said he was very afraid of him and thought that he would have killed someone if he didn't kill him first. During the cross examination, Eric actually was caught in a lie. He said that they had bought pistols for protection three years before the murder, but it turned out the story he claimed to have bought them from wasn't even open at the time. And so the prosecution was able to ask the jury, you know, if he could lie about that, what else is he capable of lying about? Is it all made up? The main thing that was different with this trial though was

Lyle did not testify, which was an interesting move. So this time the jury deliberated for nearly three weeks and they ended up finding Eric and Lyle guilty of two counts of first degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder. And before they were sentenced, they decided they wanted to have their word out to the public. And they did an interview with Barbara Walters. And this is a really famous interview. It's very interesting. A lot of it's on YouTube, I recommend watching it. Do you think the media has portrayed you fairly? Can you tell? I don't know if anyone can be portrayed fairly in the media, who they are. Well let me say it. There are people, great-natured people, who think that you too are spoiled brats, that

you are evil, that you are monsters. What do you say to them? It's not who I am, but I can't defend that. I would be surprised if anybody that was present at that trial and saw the whole thing, rather than snippets on the news, would feel that. So the jury ended up deciding that they were not going to move forward with the death penalty because Eric and Lyle had no history of violence, but they completely rejected the idea that this was done in self-defense in any way or that the boys were abused. The Menendez brothers

were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on July 2nd, 1996. And this is one of the most controversial verdicts of all time. This is highly debated to this day and I would say the majority of people are on the side of the Menendez brothers now. Maybe not at the time this was all happening, but like I said earlier in the video, I think people looking back at this are seeing it with new eyes and are thinking twice. And when they were heading into the sentencing period, the brothers ended up putting in a request for them to at least be put in the same prison so they could be together, but that was denied, which was pretty shocking. Lylonaric were separated and sent to separate prisons.

September 10th, 1996, they waved at each other from across the prison courtyard and that was the last they would see each other for decades, which was very, very hard on them. They are extremely close and they were also considered maximum security prisoners so they were separated from all the other inmates and spent a lot of time alone. They tried to appeal the outcome but on February 27th the California Court of Appeal appelled their convictions. In May of 1998 they tried to get this Supreme Court to review the case and they declined to do so. They've tried several times to file habeas corpus

petitions with the Supreme Court of California, but they've been denied multiple times. 2005 was the last time that they were denied and they've been kind of stuck ever since. So since then, Eric and Lyle both got married in prison. In 1996, Lyle married Anna Erickson, but then in 2001, Anna ended up finding out that he had been shooting on her in jail. He was writing to other women, so she divorced him. Then he got married again in 2003 to a woman named Rebecca. Erick married a woman named Tammy in 1999 and he had been writing to her the pen pals for like six years before they got married. In 2005 she was

interviewed by ABC News and she said that their relationship was something that she's dreamed about for a long time. In 2005 she even published a book called They Said We Never Make It, My Life with Eric Menendez. In 2017 they didn't interview with people in magazine and explained that even though they were in separate prisons they remained really close, even though they couldn't see or talk to each other. They even were communicating through their wives. They were sending letters back and forth. They would even play chess through their wives through the letters. But they finally got to see each other again in February of 2018 when Lyle was actually transferred to the same prison that his brother was in. And when they finally got to see each

other in person it had been 22 years. And people who were there said that they just hugged each other in silence for minutes, and they were both just crying hysterically. And after that, they actually allowed them to have a few hours alone together. At first, they were housed in separate areas in the jail, but eventually, they moved them into the same unit. So now, they get to spend time together every day. They get to have meals together and walk around, get exercise together outside, and a lot of their family members still stand by them to this day, and they're very happy that they're at least now together. Some family members have even spoken out that they are absolutely sure that Eric and Lyle really did go through years of horrific abuse at the hand of their father and that their mother let it happen. And that's what makes

this case so controversial. Some people think that this is 100% a fabricated defense by two rich kids who got greedy and killed the parents and many others see it the complete opposite way. that these were two very abused boys who were terrified and felt like they had no other choice but to kill their parents and self-defense. So that leads me to the question of the day. What do you guys think happened? Do you think the Menendez brothers are guilty or not guilty and why? That is going to be it for me today, guys. Thank you for joining me for another episode.

And make sure you follow the show on Spotify and Apple Podcast. It really does help me out. If you wanna watch the video version of this show, you can find it on my YouTube channel, which will be linked, or you can just search Kendall Ray. I will be back with another episode soon, but until then, stay safe out there. I'm going to tie back. Take your dean. Let it all out. Now, Ariad, co-op, we're here for all the outs.

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