The Murder Trial Of The Menendez Brothers
KIM KULISH/AFP via Getty ImagesErik and Lyle Menendez during a 1995 hearing.
The next 1990s scandal actually began in August 1989, when Jose and Kitty Menendez were discovered murdered at their Beverly Hills home. Before long, suspicion fell on their two sons, Lyle and Erik Menendez.
The Menendez brothers were arrested in March 1990. They had drawn investigators’ suspicion because of their vivid description of the crime scene, a screenplay that Erik had written in which a character murders his parents to inherit their money, and because of how the brothers had blown through their father’s fortune on cars, watches, and vacations.
What’s more, both brothers had confessed to murder during taped confessions with Erik’s therapist, Dr. Jerome Oziel. Oziel’s mistress — after she and Oziel broke up — then told the police about their confessions.
Los Angeles District AttorneyThe room where Jose and Kitty Menendez were murdered.
But during their trial in 1993 — which played out on the nascent Court TV, meaning that Americans could watch as it unfolded — the Menendez brothers claimed that they had suffered from years of brutal physical, emotional, and sexual abuse at their parents’ hands.
The brothers’ first trial ended in a mistrial in 1994, but they were each found guilty of first-degree murder at the conclusion of their second trial in 1996. They were sentenced to life in prison for the crime.
“I am the kid that did kill his parents, and no river of tears has changed that and no amount of regret has changed it,” Lyle Menendez told ABC News in 2017. “I accept that. You are often defined by a few moments of your life, but that’s not who you are in your life, you know. Your life is your totality of it… You can’t change it. You just, you’re stuck with the decisions you made.”
