The Menendez Brothers: Chance at Freedom

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Speaker 16 Tonight on dateline.

Speaker 17 I was just firing. As I went into the room, I just started firing.

Speaker 18 What was in front of you?

Speaker 19 My parents.

Speaker 20 35 years later, their crime still haunts

Speaker 20 Lyle and Eric Menendez, the brothers who killed their parents.

Speaker 23 I just told them that I didn't want to do this.

Speaker 24 And

Speaker 22 that it hurt me.

Speaker 20 Were they abused? Should they go free?

Speaker 26 Social media young people have just taken up their banner.

Speaker 20 Now, new evidence.

Speaker 27 There was a letter that Eric Menendez had written. I'm convinced that he was talking about sexual abuse.

Speaker 26 There was a connection between Jose Menendez and some Menudo boy band members. Roy Rosella told me that he had been assaulted.

Speaker 20 Hear from the brothers themselves.

Speaker 28 People were afraid of him.

Speaker 19 There was no way he was going to let this secret get out.

Speaker 29 But you could laugh. But leave and do what?

Speaker 31 I believe that they should be released.

Speaker 32 There's no reason they should get out.

Speaker 33 They killed their parents.

Speaker 24 I mean, come on.

Speaker 35 The bone-chilling case of the Menendez Brothers. After 35 years in prison, can they win their freedom?

Speaker 15 I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.

Speaker 20 Here's Keith Morrison with the Menendez Brothers: Chance at Freedom.

Speaker 38 A sensational story we thought was over may soon have a new ending.

Speaker 40 After more than three decades behind bars,

Speaker 16 freedom might be in reach for Lyle and Eric Menendez.

Speaker 31 We're very sure not only that the brothers have rehabilitated and that they will be safe to be reintegrated in our society, but that they have paid their dues.

Speaker 27 If you had told me in 1989 that 35 years in the future that I would still be covering this case, I would have left.

Speaker 46 The wealthy sons of Beverly Hills convicted of murdering their parents are suddenly everywhere.

Speaker 49 Dramatized on the Netflix series Monsters, the Lyle and Eric Menendez story.

Speaker 50 Parodied on Saturday Night Live.

Speaker 35 People keep yelling things like, you're innocent and you're so hot.

Speaker 53 And popping up all over TikTok.

Speaker 54 This is probably one of the most famous cases ever.

Speaker 3 Their supporters go beyond social media to Hollywood.

Speaker 5 Here's Kim Kardashian speaking to variety.

Speaker 55 I feel like they just never

Speaker 55 had that fair chance. And imagine if no one believed you.

Speaker 26 We're viewing everything that happened back then through a different lens.

Speaker 14 A different lens, yes.

Speaker 14 But is it making our vision any clearer?

Speaker 32 If you use rational thought on this case, they should stay in prison for life without parole. If you use emotion, then, oh my god, why are they still there today?

Speaker 56 Let them out tomorrow.

Speaker 12 Let's go way back then, back to the beginning.

Speaker 51 August 20th, 1989, just before midnight, a 911 operator picked up a call from an apparently hysterical Lyle Menendez. Who is the person that was shot?

Speaker 51 My mom and my dad. My mom and and dad.
My Rob and Ryan. Okay, hold on a second.

Speaker 24 Detective Zoller.

Speaker 60 Les Zoller was one of just two detectives in the Beverly Hills Police Department who worked homicides back then.

Speaker 5 How many murders occurred in Beverly Hills in those days?

Speaker 30 In those days, approximately two a year.

Speaker 8 On that particular August night, Zoller was asleep when his boss called.

Speaker 30 And he said, come on in, we've had a murder. And I asked him for some information.
He said he gave me the address of 722 North Elm.

Speaker 39 Ziller drove over and walked inside the house.

Speaker 24 It was eerily

Speaker 30 quiet.

Speaker 30 And when I went into the den library, first thing I noticed was Jose Menendez seated on the couch. He was slumped to one side.
His head was to one side.

Speaker 11 It was bad.

Speaker 37 Very, very bad.

Speaker 30 He was wearing shorts and he had a shotgun blast to his thigh, blood-soaked, all the way down.

Speaker 30 And then I noticed his wife, Kitty, at his feet on the floor.

Speaker 62 She was curled into a fetal position and, like her husband, had been shot many times, several times near her knee.

Speaker 14 And most horribly, Kitty was shot point-blank in the face.

Speaker 32 There was a contact wound on Kitty Menendez's face. It blew out her eye.
I mean, it was grotesque what happened to her.

Speaker 8 Back then, Pamela Buzanich was an L.A.

Speaker 68 County prosecutor in the organized crime unit.

Speaker 69 But nothing prepared her for this.

Speaker 67 Jose and Kitty had been shot 15 times.

Speaker 32 Shotgun killings are very messy, and there were brains and blood everywhere.

Speaker 46 It looked as if Jose and Kitty had been relaxing in the den.

Speaker 38 An empty bowl of cream and berries and Eric's college paperwork were on the coffee table.

Speaker 72 The television set was on.

Speaker 8 There was no sign of a break-in,

Speaker 56 but...

Speaker 30 We didn't see any shotgun shells.

Speaker 60 What did that say to you?

Speaker 30 Somebody collected the shotgun shells.

Speaker 73 But who does a thing like that if they've got a messy crime scene of that sort?

Speaker 30 Somebody that didn't want fingerprints on the shotgun shells, the only thing I could think of.

Speaker 8 Well, investigators examined the crime scene.

Speaker 57 Lyle Menendez, then 21, and Eric, 18, went to the station to speak to police.

Speaker 30 The brothers said they were in and out throughout the day and then as evening approached they decided that they wanted to go to the movies.

Speaker 30 They wanted to see a James Bond movie, but it was sold out so they saw the Batman movie, which they had both seen before.

Speaker 72 After the movie, they told detectives they'd planned to meet a friend for a drink at the Cheesecake Factory.

Speaker 72 But they had to go back to the house to pick up Eric's fake ID.

Speaker 69 And when they walked in, they said they saw a haze in the air and smelled gunpowder smoke.

Speaker 61 They went into the den and then dialed 911.

Speaker 3 The news spread very quickly.

Speaker 8 Kitty's sister Joan.

Speaker 75 I got a phone call from my brother.

Speaker 75 And I remember putting the phone down on the table and walking around the house screaming.

Speaker 14 As detectives worked into the night, they had no idea.

Speaker 77 This was the beginning of a 35-year saga.

Speaker 78 A case we're still debating.

Speaker 3 Have the Menendez brothers served their time?

Speaker 72 Or should they, as the jury decreed, stay in prison for life?

Speaker 72 We were up against the myths that boys aren't sexually abused, that CEOs and upstanding people like my father aren't child molesters.

Speaker 50 Even with evidence from another alleged victim.

Speaker 26 He said that Jose Menendez said to him, I own you. I bought you.

Speaker 46 Some say sympathy is one thing.

Speaker 56 The law is another.

Speaker 80 What matters is not whether they were abused or not. The issue at hand was,

Speaker 80 was there an imminent fear for their lives? And the answer is no.

Speaker 14 So, a legal conundrum.

Speaker 54 Today, the Menendez family is meeting for a press conference.

Speaker 24 Now gone viral.

Speaker 42 History somehow repeating itself with eyes glued once again to the courts in Los Angeles,

Speaker 4 where Eric and Lyle await their fate.

Speaker 57 It was like she just knew.

Speaker 14 Not what happened at the end, of course, but what came before.

Speaker 56 Mary Louise, or Kitty, as everybody called her, was determined she would be well off someday, even though she and her siblings were raised by a single mother in Illinois.

Speaker 75 Kitty grew up believing that she was going to marry well and have household help.

Speaker 58 How would she know such a thing?

Speaker 75 I think this is probably what my mother had maybe wanted for herself and never got.

Speaker 53 Kitty was pretty.

Speaker 8 In 1962, she was crowned Miss Oak Lawn.

Speaker 38 You should be in show business, her mother told her.

Speaker 62 So Kitty studied radio and television at Southern Illinois University.

Speaker 51 Was that wrapped up in the whole idea of if you're in that field, you're more likely to meet a successful man?

Speaker 15 Absolutely.

Speaker 46 In college, she met a bundle of ambition named Jose Menendez.

Speaker 62 He had fled communist Cuba at 16 with bold dreams of striking it big in business, just the kind of man Kitty was searching for.

Speaker 68 And so they married in 1963.

Speaker 86 Diane Hernandez was Kitty's niece. As a teen, she lived with the family off and on.

Speaker 7 I bet you idolized Kitty.

Speaker 33 Oh, I did from the very beginning. And I was known as a daughter Kitty never had.

Speaker 8 Of course, as the world would come to know, Kitty and Jose had sons, Lyle and Eric.

Speaker 36 Did they seem to get along?

Speaker 24 Did they like each other?

Speaker 75 Absolutely. Very close.
Yeah, I think Eric depended on Lyle a lot.

Speaker 87 Eric was quite introverted.

Speaker 8 Alan Anderson was Kitty's nephew.

Speaker 50 He spent summers with the Menendez family as a kid at their home and bonded with Lyle.

Speaker 87 He was a mischievous boy, to say the least. He liked to smile and laugh and giggle.
Oh, he loved to laugh and giggle.

Speaker 5 But what the Menendez brothers did most, said Alan, was practice and practice and practice.

Speaker 87 Jose wanted his kids to be the best, especially in sports, I noticed immediately.

Speaker 79 Swimming, soccer, tennis.

Speaker 8 Jose pushed his sons to excel at everything, as his own career skyrocketed.

Speaker 8 In the 70s, Jose was the general manager at Hertz and impressed his sons by bringing the company's celebrity spokesman home to dinner.

Speaker 40 Here's O.J.

Speaker 8 Simpson in that famous TV commercial from the time.

Speaker 42 And here's OJ with Jose posing at an awards ceremony in 1978.

Speaker 87 Jose was, of course, living the American dream and he wanted his boys to continue that American dream.

Speaker 7 In the early 80s, Jose put rental cars behind him and became a music exec at RCA Records where he worked with big names like Eurythmics and Duran Duran.

Speaker 40 In 1983 he signed the Puerto Rican boy band Menudo to a multi-year deal.

Speaker 91 Menudo Mania has swept El Salvador.

Speaker 16 As Dennis Murphy reported for Nightly News at the time, Menudo was huge.

Speaker 91 They are five Puerto Rican youngsters called Menudo. They are to Latin American girls what the Beatles were 20 years ago.

Speaker 51 You'll hear more about Menudo later.

Speaker 3 Jose traded in music for Hollywood, and in 1986, he moved his family west when he took a job with Corollcal Pictures.

Speaker 83 It's nice.

Speaker 90 The company that produced mega hits like Basic Instinct

Speaker 62 and the Rambo series.

Speaker 92 Don't push it, I'll give you a war.

Speaker 19 You won't believe it.

Speaker 48 Jose was put in charge charge of their new video distribution business.

Speaker 93 So we think 1989 will be a tremendous year. I think we will be very happy with the growth of the company.

Speaker 94 And that was the year 1989 when Robert Rand, then a freelance reporter for the Miami Herald, went to Las Vegas to cover a trade show for the home video business and happened to meet Jose Menendez.

Speaker 61 What was your impression of the guy?

Speaker 27 Talk to him for maybe two or three minutes. Seemed professional, dynamic.

Speaker 8 A high-powered career, a beautiful family, and finally, the one missing piece of Jose's American dream: the perfect home.

Speaker 68 Jose moved his family from Calabasas, then pre-Kardashian and a relatively unknown enclave outside of Los Angeles, to a more tony address.

Speaker 7 Joan was with her sister the day the realtor called Kitty.

Speaker 84 They had accepted Jose's offer, and Kitty, you got your zip code.

Speaker 84 And that made her so happy.

Speaker 42 90210.

Speaker 24 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 75 Absolutely.

Speaker 90 722 North Elm Drive.

Speaker 97 A six-bedroom Mediterranean-style home.

Speaker 67 Swimming pool, guesthouse, tennis court.

Speaker 8 Elton John once lived in this very house.

Speaker 14 So did a Saudi prince and even Prince himself.

Speaker 40 By August 1989, Jose had truly made it.

Speaker 33 They were stars in our family, Kitty and Jose.

Speaker 60 His eldest was a student at Princeton.

Speaker 72 His youngest was about to start at UCLA.

Speaker 29 The perfect family, or so it seemed, until it all blew apart in that barrage of shotgun shells.

Speaker 14 It didn't make sense.

Speaker 80 Nobody quite knew

Speaker 80 who had killed the parents.

Speaker 50 Alan Abrahamson is a journalism professor at USC.

Speaker 6 Back in 1989, he was a reporter for the LA Times.

Speaker 80 Was it an armed robbery? Because of Jose's position in business? Had he been taken out by a cartel? Had he been taken out by the mob? Any and all things seemed possible. No one really knew.

Speaker 8 After all, Jose had been shot in the thigh and kitty in the knee.

Speaker 86 A mafia signature, perhaps?

Speaker 16 And then there was the company Jose was running.

Speaker 62 It distributed all kinds of movies, including children's movies.

Speaker 3 But one of its founders, Noel Bloom, was once an executive in the porn industry.

Speaker 32 A lot of pornography is organized crime backed because it's a great way to make a lot of money in an industry that's not, you know, very well regarded.

Speaker 23 And the brothers thought detectives needed to look at Bloom.

Speaker 101 I got a call from Beverly Hills Police Department. They wanted to meet with me and ask me a few questions.

Speaker 102 They mimic our friends.

Speaker 54 They mirror our family.

Speaker 103 They share memories we remember.

Speaker 54 They ask questions only someone close would know.

Speaker 32 They speak in the voices we love.

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Speaker 113 Kitty Menendez shot this home video in August 1989, capturing images of what looked like a happy family.

Speaker 18 Okay, wait, goodbye, everybody.

Speaker 114 Eleven days later, Kitty and her husband's murders were front-page news.

Speaker 80 It was a big story from the get-go because it happened in Beverly Hills, California.

Speaker 8 The big story became a big problem for Coralco Pictures.

Speaker 27 The company was getting beaten up in the media because all the media stories were this was a mafia hit, somehow related to shady dealings that this company was doing.

Speaker 16 They hired a publicist to help calm the media storm.

Speaker 5 Sylvester Stallone spoke warmly of Jose.

Speaker 96 He was a true cornerstone of the East Neas Company, which I love.

Speaker 49 And Jose's memorial service was held at the Director's Guild of America headquarters on Sunset Boulevard.

Speaker 29 Lyle and Eric arrived late to the service.

Speaker 58 How'd they behave when they they were there?

Speaker 27 Lyle Menendez was very cool, calm, and collected. Eric Menendez got up and tried to speak, and he lasted about two minutes before just breaking down in tears and sitting down.

Speaker 8 Kitty's sister, Joan, was at the memorial too and heard something disturbing about Jose.

Speaker 75 Several men that worked with Jose

Speaker 75 talked to me. at that memorial service and told me how

Speaker 75 he loved to humiliate other men.

Speaker 113 Pretty shocking thing to hear at somebody's memorial service, isn't it?

Speaker 116 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 75 Yeah, not very memorial.

Speaker 8 So, Jose had made enemies, and apparently one of them was his colleague Noel Bloom, who had once produced pornographic films.

Speaker 3 They bickered about a lot of things.

Speaker 30 Well, mostly it was because of the pornography. Jose didn't like that at all.

Speaker 7 Detective Zoller talked to the brothers, who were pointing a finger right at Bloom.

Speaker 42 Did it seem to you that there was a motive there?

Speaker 30 Possible.

Speaker 41 Bloom had been arrested before on obscenity charges, but never convicted.

Speaker 89 Why would they say you were involved with organized crime?

Speaker 101 Because people had a perception that people in the adult business were organized crime, which is totally not true. At least I wasn't.

Speaker 8 Still, but the brothers' accusations making the papers, he was nervous.

Speaker 58 Were you sort of day by day waiting for somebody to call you thinking to be taken in and put in handcuffs?

Speaker 101 I got a call from Beverly Hills Police Department. They wanted to meet with me and ask me a few questions.
And I said, I've been waiting.

Speaker 53 That meeting, it turned out, was about all it took.

Speaker 30 He was very cooperative, and we couldn't determine that he had a motive at all.

Speaker 61 So, Noel Bloom was no longer a suspect.

Speaker 113 And the rumored mafia connection to the crime?

Speaker 58 Not a chance, said Prosecutor Pam Pozanich.

Speaker 32 The number of shots would tell you that it wasn't an organized crime hit. Why do you say that? Because they were torn apart.

Speaker 32 If you think about what the media portrays or Hollywood portrays as a mob hit, it was...

Speaker 80 It's just a little hole in the back of the house.

Speaker 32 Yeah, like a 22 or a 38 to the back of the head.

Speaker 38 So if it wasn't a mob hit, police were back to square one.

Speaker 46 They continued gathering information from anyone they could, including Lyle and Eric.

Speaker 59 Were they believable in those conversations, you recall?

Speaker 15 Yes.

Speaker 42 So they didn't seem to be lying or obfuscating or?

Speaker 30 No, they answered our questions willingly.

Speaker 5 Two months after the murders, reporter Robert Rand interviewed Eric, a young man who seemed in awe of his dad.

Speaker 19 That's just a really incredible man.

Speaker 28 And people were afraid of him.

Speaker 117 People were afraid of him because she would walk in the room and know that this man was more confident, this man was more intelligent.

Speaker 27 Eric was emotionally appropriate.

Speaker 27 He'd cry at times.

Speaker 27 And he was telling really lovely stories about how wonderful his parents were.

Speaker 46 Eric said his father wanted to get into politics.

Speaker 117 He was going to become Senator of Florida, and then he was going to spend his life making Cuba a territory of the United States.

Speaker 4 Now, with his father's death, Eric said he and his brother wanted to fulfill his father's dream.

Speaker 117 I wanted to become Senator of Florida.

Speaker 117 And my brother wants to become President of the United States.

Speaker 99 And then the mood shifted, and Eric described what he saw when he walked into the family den on August 20th.

Speaker 92 They weren't real. They didn't look nail.
The wax. They looked like wax.

Speaker 17 It was something that I've never seen my dad helpless.

Speaker 92 You know, I think that possibly if Lao and I would have been home, if we would have been able to do something about it, maybe.

Speaker 92 Maybe my dad would be alive.

Speaker 46 While Eric seemed to be mourning his parents, police couldn't help but notice what the brothers were up to in the aftermath of their parents' deaths.

Speaker 30 They were spending over $15,000

Speaker 30 with Rolex watches and money clips. This is four days after the murder.
They were just spending, spending, spending.

Speaker 57 Very strange.

Speaker 30 To me, it was.

Speaker 119 Months went by.

Speaker 12 The mob had been ruled out.

Speaker 120 The Menendez murders remained a stubborn mystery.

Speaker 97 But in the absence of answers, something kept buzzing around in Detective Zoller's mind.

Speaker 11 It was about the Menendez brothers.

Speaker 61 At one moment he couldn't shake.

Speaker 13 It was when, just hours after the murders, Lyle returned to the house in Beverly Hills.

Speaker 30 And I said, I'm sorry for your loss. What are you trying to get out of the house? We want to get our tennis equipment.

Speaker 30 And I said, well, where is that? He said, it's in the library where my parents were murdered. And he was matter of fact and

Speaker 30 didn't seem very upset to me.

Speaker 42 And prepared to walk into that room just for the purpose of getting their tennis equipment.

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 38 Weird.

Speaker 8 As was this.

Speaker 40 The day after the murders, Lyle and Eric went to the bank looking for Jose's safety deposit box.

Speaker 86 They were trying to find Jose's will.

Speaker 89 Does that surprise you that they would do it so soon?

Speaker 30 Oh, definitely.

Speaker 29 Why would the brothers worry about the will and so quickly?

Speaker 53 The detective dug into it and out spooled a little story.

Speaker 76 Lyle had been caught cheating at Princeton.

Speaker 65 Eric had fought with his father over tennis.

Speaker 97 And in response, Jose had threatened to disinherit them.

Speaker 68 But those, Zoller discovered, were not the only reasons.

Speaker 11 There was this.

Speaker 121 Well, in the first house, they took the whole safe. The second house, they got into the safe.

Speaker 99 A year before the murders, Lyle and Eric had burglarized the homes of their friend's wealthy parents.

Speaker 38 These are wealthy, wealthy young men.

Speaker 73 Yeah, it was just...

Speaker 62 Privilege in every way. Right.

Speaker 30 It was just because we can do it.

Speaker 46 At the time, Jose hired a prominent criminal attorney who arranged for the younger brother, Eric, to take the fall.

Speaker 30 Because he was a minor, knowing that Eric probably wouldn't get any jail time. And part of the disposition was that he contact a therapist.
In comes Jerry O'Zeal.

Speaker 41 Dr.

Speaker 7 Jerome O'Zeal, you want to remember that name, a Beverly Hills psychologist who specialized in phobias and sex therapy.

Speaker 68 So, therapy, no jail time, for the burglaries.

Speaker 71 But were they written out of Jose's will?

Speaker 4 Finally, the brothers found it. And they discovered Jose had not disinherited them after all.

Speaker 46 They now stood to inherit the family's reported $14 million estate.

Speaker 60 And as Detective Zoller discovered, they were just spending, spending, spending.

Speaker 38 Three Rolex watches, a private tennis coach for Eric, a Porsche.

Speaker 57 Lyle even bought a chicken wings restaurant and went to visit his cousin Alan in Chicago.

Speaker 87 He ordered some of the most expensive shirts I've ever seen in my life.

Speaker 78 He ordered some jewelry, ordered these shoes, these expensive shoes.

Speaker 87 And I was like, wow, the way he was spending money for me was very strange.

Speaker 11 Cousin Diane said the spending was just Lyle's way of grieving.

Speaker 33 People would ask, you know, people were like, what's he doing? And I would defend him and say, well, everybody reacts differently when somebody dies. This is just his way of coping, I guess.

Speaker 95 Their casual behavior after the murders, the hunt for the will, the spending spree, none of it was criminal, but it certainly caught the attention of the prosecutor.

Speaker 32 You begin to see a pattern here, and you begin to think of greed.

Speaker 68 But even if they were spoiled and self-centered, it was a long way from that to killing their parents.

Speaker 115 Or maybe it wasn't.

Speaker 8 Because Detective Zoller learned about something else.

Speaker 4 A case of life imitating art, perhaps.

Speaker 85 Zoller had been talking to Eric's best friend, Craig Signorelli.

Speaker 71 And Craig mentioned that he and Eric often fantasized about committing the perfect crime and had even written a screenplay together in high school.

Speaker 30 And I asked him, what's it about? Well, it's about this kid that murders his parents for the money. And I had actually heard that Kitty...
type this for him.

Speaker 30 Because

Speaker 30 it was a school project.

Speaker 65 Then Craig told Ziller something even more disturbing.

Speaker 14 It happened, said Craig, when he went to see Eric at the Menendez house after the murders.

Speaker 30 Eric said, do you want to know what happened? And he described shooting the parents, and then he summed it all up by saying, it could happen.

Speaker 30 And Craig thought about it and he says, well, is he saying that's what he thinks happened here at the house? Or did they actually commit the crime?

Speaker 5 What a story.

Speaker 95 But the detectives wondered, would Eric tell the story of the shooting to Craig again on tape?

Speaker 32 They decided to wire up Craig and go to this restaurant.

Speaker 53 But this time, Eric wasn't at all talkative.

Speaker 30 Eric didn't admit anything. I think his conscience said, you better not talk too much about this.

Speaker 56 Not that day, anyway, and not to Craig Signorelli.

Speaker 15 But Eric did talk, eventually, and what he said would change everything.

Speaker 40 Detective Les Zoller had a growing and disturbing suspicion that Lyle and Eric Menendez had shotgunned their parents to death in the den of their Beverly Hills mansion.

Speaker 78 Thing was, the story the brothers told about discovering their parents' bodies, it never quite made sense to Zoller.

Speaker 30 The brothers said that they saw this haze in the air and some smoke that they smelled.

Speaker 5 Like gunpowder smoke.

Speaker 30 Gunpowder smoke. But I mean, that dissipates pretty darn quick.
Well, the officers got there right after they did, and they didn't smell anything.

Speaker 45 The gunpowder smoke and fantasizing about the perfect crime and the screenplay

Speaker 68 and even what might be called confession.

Speaker 62 And then one day, he just knew.

Speaker 73 Was there a particular time when you thought, okay, yes, it's them?

Speaker 30 Well, when we got a call from Judalon Smith.

Speaker 68 A name he'd never heard before.

Speaker 57 What did she have to tell you?

Speaker 30 Her whole purpose was to talk about this doctor.

Speaker 30 and how he was her therapist and he was having an affair with her.

Speaker 40 Not relevant information to a homicide detective, but this was...

Speaker 57 What was his first name?

Speaker 30 Dr. Jerry O'Zeal.

Speaker 60 Dr.

Speaker 95 O'Zeal, the psychologist Eric was sent to after those burglaries.

Speaker 79 Two months after the murders, Judalon Smith said she was with Dr.

Speaker 86 O'Zeal when he returned a call from Eric, who was asking for an emergency session.

Speaker 38 Smith wouldn't talk to us for this report, but she did back then.

Speaker 60 And here's what she told us Dr.

Speaker 86 Ozile said after getting off that call.

Speaker 84 He's saying he thinks that they killed their parents?

Speaker 83 Smith told Zoller that Dr.

Speaker 11 Ozile was worried about what might happen at the session.

Speaker 68 And so he asked her to stay in the waiting room of his office while he met with Eric on October 31st, 1989.

Speaker 60 And so she said she did.

Speaker 30 As she sat there, Lyle burst into the room.

Speaker 52 Lyle Menendez, who had been at the Elm Drive home passing out candy to trick-or-treaters, rushed over to Dr.

Speaker 46 Ozile's office because Ozile had called him and said, Eric told him everything.

Speaker 30 Eric said that they shot their parents.

Speaker 5 Judyn Smith told Zoller she heard Lyle confront his brother.

Speaker 30 And she heard him say, Why did you tell him? We're going to have to kill him now.

Speaker 15 Seriously? Yes.

Speaker 30 And Eric said, I can't kill anymore. And he burst in tears and left.

Speaker 24 Lyle and Dr.

Speaker 30 O'Zeal

Speaker 30 more or less followed him. And Lyle got to the elevator, and Dr.
O'Zeal said,

Speaker 30 am I in danger?

Speaker 30 And Lyle said, that's all I can tell you is have a good life, Dr. O'Zeal.

Speaker 30 And it freaked him out.

Speaker 73 What followed was a strange and nervous dance.

Speaker 68 Ozile told Lyle and Eric to come back for follow-up therapy sessions.

Speaker 6 The brothers, afraid Ozile might go to the police, agreed.

Speaker 5 During one of those sessions, they both confessed to killing their parents.

Speaker 21 And Dr. Ozile recorded the conversation.

Speaker 95 Judalon Smith learned about the recordings, but it was months before she told detectives, who promptly seized the tapes.

Speaker 16 But there was just one problem.

Speaker 62 They weren't allowed to listen to them because of doctor-patient privilege.

Speaker 89 How frustrating was that?

Speaker 30 Well, it it was very frustrating.

Speaker 30 Yep, a good piece of evidence. I couldn't even listen to it.

Speaker 56 Still, they thought they had enough evidence to arrest the brothers.

Speaker 93 Today, at approximately 1.2 million.

Speaker 46 It was March 8th, 1990.

Speaker 45 More than six months after the killings.

Speaker 93 Detectives arrested Joseph Lyle Menendez for the August murders of his mother and father.

Speaker 8 Eric was playing in a tennis tournament in Israel at the time.

Speaker 93 Eric Menendez is being sought by detectives of this department.

Speaker 8 He surrendered to police three days later.

Speaker 58 Could you believe it?

Speaker 106 No,

Speaker 33 no, it was absolutely devastating, shocking, just beyond words.

Speaker 45 Former LA Times reporter Alan Abrahamson.

Speaker 80 Who would imagine that these two young men of privilege, position, and power to be could

Speaker 80 kill their parents?

Speaker 80 That's the kind of stuff that Shakespeare wrote about.

Speaker 39 And yet it seemed that's exactly what happened.

Speaker 14 A few weeks after the arrests, Detective Zoller confirmed another tip Judalon Smith gave them.

Speaker 30 Judalon said that the guns were purchased at a gun store in San Diego. I was looking through gun records, and I said, this is it.

Speaker 77 The name recorded on the sales slip was that of an old friend of Lyle's. But the friend was not even in California when the guns were purchased, and he was missing missing his ID.

Speaker 52 We learned later that Lyle had taken the wallet.

Speaker 16 It seemed like overwhelming evidence that Lyle and Eric Henendez killed their parents.

Speaker 68 But their story of why they did it, that would leave the family and the rest of America speechless.

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Speaker 125 A BetterHelp ad.

Speaker 126 This November, BetterHelp is encouraging people to reach out, grab lunch with an old friend, call your parents, or even find support in therapy.

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Speaker 21 The media feasted on the story of the rich brothers charged with killing their parents, apparently to get their hands on the family's reported $14 million estate.

Speaker 80 They were smirking, they were smugged. How do you please?

Speaker 15 Not guilty.

Speaker 78 Hard to overstate the public's disgust with those young men.

Speaker 57 But on the other side of the country, in an upscale New Jersey town just a few miles from Princeton, people began comparing memories.

Speaker 61 memories.

Speaker 127 Their home at the time was a Tudor-style home. It was on a lake.

Speaker 8 Bill Curtin was a young tennis coach when he met Jose Menendez and was certainly impressed.

Speaker 127 There were two clear sides of him. One was the very friendly, outgoing, joking person.
The flip side was how driven and controlling he was.

Speaker 5 Jose engaged Bill to teach his son Lyle and then watched the lessons, but didn't just watch.

Speaker 127 He would physically come on to the tennis court and start giving instruction to Lyle while I was still there. That was

Speaker 127 very very strange, very uncomfortable.

Speaker 85 And Bill learned Jose had hired several coaches for Lyle.

Speaker 52 That the boy was working hours every day to learn tennis.

Speaker 127 He was incredibly quiet, especially when Jose was present.

Speaker 95 Neighborhood memories about a successful but slightly imposing imposing family.

Speaker 128 Everyone

Speaker 128 seemed to look up to them but not draw closer to them.

Speaker 8 Alicia Hurts was a neighbor of the Menendez family. She was also Lyle's Spanish teacher at the exclusive Princeton Day School.

Speaker 78 Was he a good student?

Speaker 128 He tried to be, but he was not particularly talented. at the language.

Speaker 39 Once she caught Lyle cheating, and she said Eric cheated too.

Speaker 128 I think teachers understood deep down inside what they were going through.

Speaker 59 That they were being pressured strenuously from their parents to do

Speaker 24 well. Right.

Speaker 70 And to Alicia, it seemed to be taking a toll on Lyle.

Speaker 29 Alicia remembers twice seeing Lyle outside her office staring.

Speaker 79 Blankly.

Speaker 128 I wish to this day that I had gotten out and said, please come in.

Speaker 128 Please come in.

Speaker 57 Did you talk to Kitty or Jose about this?

Speaker 128 Oh, no, I didn't reveal anything to them.

Speaker 24 No,

Speaker 128 not anything that could get them in trouble.

Speaker 60 Like many others, said Alicia, she was careful around Kitty and Jose.

Speaker 8 But there was one episode she found too disturbing to ignore.

Speaker 40 A dinner party at the Menendez home.

Speaker 122 Jose told his guests he'd brought back a VHS tape from a trip to Brazil.

Speaker 128 And I have to show you guys this because it's so unique. And so he puts it in and I don't remember the name.

Speaker 89 What was it about?

Speaker 130 Children.

Speaker 128 People doing disgusting things.

Speaker 57 Two children.

Speaker 128 In front of children. And

Speaker 128 it was just like having no respect for children. And we...

Speaker 128 saw a few seconds of it, a few minutes, and we made excuses. A lot of us stood up and said, we have to leave.
We couldn't stand to see it, to watch it.

Speaker 45 But Jose found this ambush.

Speaker 128 Hysterically funny.

Speaker 68 Cousin Diane had her own disturbing memories about Jose.

Speaker 33 He would take their heads and push them underwater until they started panicking and needed up. He would let them up again.

Speaker 53 Jose's way of teaching his then quite young boys to swim.

Speaker 78 What did Kitty seem to think about it?

Speaker 33 I mean, if Jose did it or said it, there was no questioning it.

Speaker 106 Absolutely none.

Speaker 46 Not by the boys.

Speaker 82 Not by Kitty.

Speaker 33 She became like his right-hand man

Speaker 14 in enforcing things, including what Diane came to know as the single most important rule in the Menendez house.

Speaker 33 You cannot go down the hall when Jose is with his kids.

Speaker 51 Kitty didn't go down the hall either.

Speaker 106 No, no.

Speaker 24 Uh-uh.

Speaker 50 Cousin Alan also followed this rule when he lived with the Menendez family for a time.

Speaker 115 But he did hear things.

Speaker 87 I've heard them being whipped. Oh man, it was gut-wrenching.
Just the screams and the daddy, don't hit me, daddy, don't, you know, that kind of stuff.

Speaker 8 And there was something else, said Alan.

Speaker 87 After every sporting event we got home, that was a very common thing. They want to take showers.
There were times where he would take like Eric alone,

Speaker 87 and then there'd be times where he'd take Lyle alone.

Speaker 77 Allegations had remained family secrets.

Speaker 90 Until the sons were charged with murder.

Speaker 8 And she signed on.

Speaker 46 Veteran criminal defense attorney Leslie Abramson.

Speaker 5 Known for her brash style in the courtroom and with the press.

Speaker 90 Each brother had his own attorney.

Speaker 50 Abramson handled Eric's case.

Speaker 3 In this old interview from our archives, she described how her defense strategy for Eric began to take shape.

Speaker 131 I'm hearing a lot of very negative and

Speaker 131 at least heavily psychologically abusive things, but it's not answering what's wrong with this kid because he's incredibly sweet. How does he walk into a room with a shotgun? This kid.

Speaker 33 And it doesn't add up.

Speaker 131 I mean, I'm totally, totally puzzled. And that's when I bring in Vicker.

Speaker 46 Dr.

Speaker 70 William Vicker, a forensic psychiatrist and graduate of Harvard Law School, agreed to meet with the brothers in jail.

Speaker 61 He knew going in, police believed Lyle and Eric killed their parents for money.

Speaker 69 But

Speaker 132 based upon the

Speaker 132 dozens of parasite cases that I had worked on in the past, that's the exception. That's not the rule.

Speaker 63 The rule is that something horrible is going on in the family.

Speaker 12 The Menendez brothers wouldn't let on what was so horrible.

Speaker 72 Lyle was stoic.

Speaker 36 Eric was a mess.

Speaker 132 And the minute something would leak out about maybe things weren't so wonderful in the family, he would start crying

Speaker 132 and he would kind of

Speaker 53 dissolve

Speaker 132 and whimper and he just wouldn't go any further.

Speaker 5 Vickery put Eric on antidepressants and slowly a trust began to form.

Speaker 132 As the months rolled by, I got more and more pieces of information until finally the dam broke. The father would take showers with them.
He would give them massages. He would massage their genitals.

Speaker 132 The father always had a reason why he did this. And that

Speaker 132 all fathers, all trainers, all coaches, they do this. This is part of the expectation of a superior athlete.

Speaker 73 That's astonishing.

Speaker 38 The defense was confident it could persuade jurors that the brothers felt they had no other choice on that August night.

Speaker 18 Eric and Lyle Menendez purchased the shotguns for their own protection.

Speaker 59 What happened next in the the courtroom would be debated and scrutinized for years to come.

Speaker 28 A sensational murder trial opened today in California. The defendants' two brothers, the victims, their parents.

Speaker 6 The murder trial of Lyle and Eric Menendez began nearly four years after their parents' deaths, July 1993.

Speaker 68 If convicted here, Lyle and Eric could face the death penalty.

Speaker 133 Lyle and Eric Menendez will be tried together in the same courtroom but with two juries.

Speaker 51 But you didn't need to be on either jury or even anywhere near the courthouse to follow every movement of the trial.

Speaker 80 The idea that there was a camera in a courtroom in California was so new, so novel.

Speaker 114 Reporter Alan Abrahamson, once an attorney himself, covered the trial for the L.A. Times.

Speaker 80 You weren't just playing to the jury, you were playing to all of America.

Speaker 114 The judge's decision turned a local LA story into an international sensation.

Speaker 24 Prosecutor Pam Bozanich knew all of America was watching her every move.

Speaker 58 How did you feel as you prepared to make your opening statement?

Speaker 32 As I walked down the hallway, all the cameras were there.

Speaker 23 And,

Speaker 32 you know, I just threw up because I thought, oh, God, you know, this is really stressful.

Speaker 46 Defense Attorney Abramson appeared every bit the protective mama bear.

Speaker 68 She wrapped her arms around Eric and Lyle's shoulders.

Speaker 78 She had them trade their dapper suits for preppy sweaters.

Speaker 80 This was a show in which the entire image of the brothers who now were the boys was being completely redone to play to the 24 people in the box as well as to America.

Speaker 25 Prosecutor Bzanich steeled herself,

Speaker 78 determined not to let the optics distract the juries.

Speaker 32 Based upon this evidence, it will become apparent that this murder was unlawful, unjustified, and wholly premeditated.

Speaker 80 In basic English, the prosecution's case was this. Just the facts, ma'am.

Speaker 58 Fact number one, Lyle and Eric driving down to San Diego two days before the murders to buy shotguns and with a stolen ID.

Speaker 80 Why are you using the fake ID? Because you know you're going to be using the gun to do something you shouldn't be doing. That is evidence of intent.

Speaker 90 After the murders, the prosecution showed the brothers lied to the police for months, starting from the very moment Lyle called 911.

Speaker 29 And they did it all for the family fortune, said the state.

Speaker 71 Remember, Lyle and Eric had searched for the will the day after their parents' murders and went on a lavish multi-state spending spree.

Speaker 32 They were very aggressive about spending money as soon as possible. Yeah.
Which I thought was very strange.

Speaker 70 It was pretty obvious, said the prosecutor. First-degree murder.

Speaker 51 And they did it for the money.

Speaker 80 At the end of the prosecution case, I was like, okay, these two brothers are so guilty, it's not even funny.

Speaker 85 But then, of course,

Speaker 46 the defense got its turn. Ms.

Speaker 30 Abramson, for the defense.

Speaker 34 Thank you, Anna.

Speaker 32 We had a joke. The investigator, myself, and my co-counsel, Lester.
The joke was, you have a gun, you have two bullets, you go in the courtroom. Who do you shoot?

Speaker 88 Okay?

Speaker 32 So both the guys say they would shoot Lyle and Eric. My thing was, I'm going to shoot Leslie twice.
I felt that the brothers were evil, but not as bad as she was.

Speaker 3 Abramson had a reputation for doing whatever it took.

Speaker 18 You guys haven't been fair to these boys, and you're not fair to me now.

Speaker 7 She told the juries the brothers had shot their parents all right, but it wasn't murder.

Speaker 42 It was something the law called imperfect self-defense.

Speaker 132 That is to say, under all the circumstances, it was reasonable to the person to think that they were acting in self-defense, but the reality is that that wasn't the case at all.

Speaker 46 In other words, an honest but unreasonable belief that one's life is in danger.

Speaker 8 The defense argued that the brothers weren't spoiled, they were damaged, subject to years of abuse that made the decision to kill their parents seem to them like an act of self-defense against imminent danger.

Speaker 69 If the juries agreed,

Speaker 46 the Menendez brothers would get manslaughter instead of murder.

Speaker 18 Our witnesses will paint a portrait of Jose and Mary Luise Menendez as parents that will make understandable to you how they could have died at the hands of their children.

Speaker 18 what they did to their children to bring this about.

Speaker 80 The parents were as much on trial as Lyle and Eric Menendez were on trial.

Speaker 80 And while the prosecution tried to stick to a just-the-facts ma'am narrative, the defense strategy was emotion, emotion, emotion, emotion.

Speaker 4 The defense called teachers and coaches and family members to testify about emotional and physical abuse.

Speaker 62 Cousin Diane also took the stand.

Speaker 8 And here came the most explosive issue of the trial.

Speaker 20 Diane testified that when Lyle was eight years old, he told her a secret about Jose.

Speaker 33 He and his dad have been touching each other and he indicated that it was in his genital talaria.

Speaker 129 He asked me if

Speaker 129 my dad ever gave me massages.

Speaker 40 Another cousin, Andy Cano, said a young Eric wanted to know if what was happening to him was normal.

Speaker 18 What did he say about where the massages were?

Speaker 129 Well, he told me his father was massaging his.

Speaker 32 He he used that word yes he did prosecutor bazanich was to say the least skeptical if my daughter needed me to lie for her i'd lie for her if it was a life and death thing of course you would if it's your cousin that you grew up with of course you would you pretty sure that they were doing that

Speaker 32 i'm positive one reason why

Speaker 32 a relative came to me and said that she felt that the defense was made up, that she confronted Lyle about it, and he said to her, that's the way it's going to be.

Speaker 89 So we had to ask, did the brothers ask you to lie for them? No.

Speaker 49 Did they ask you to sort of like shade things or tell certain stories, not other stories, or anything like that?

Speaker 78 The defense contended the abuse was real, went on for years, and finally...

Speaker 56 They

Speaker 132 came to believe that something terrible was about to break loose.

Speaker 78 Specifically, that their parents were going to kill them if they didn't kill their parents first.

Speaker 5 Mental health experts testified and said that was understandable.

Speaker 18 Eric and Lyle Menendez purchased the shotguns for their own protection.

Speaker 89 It was a high-stakes defense, and by far the most important witnesses would be the brothers themselves.

Speaker 17 He said, I should kill you, and next time I will.

Speaker 32 When you put the shotgun up against her left cheek and you pull the trigger, did you love your mother? mother?

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Speaker 125 A BetterHelp ad.

Speaker 126 This November, BetterHelp is encouraging people to reach out, grab lunch with an old friend, call your parents, or even find support in therapy.

Speaker 126 BetterHelp makes it easy with its therapist match commitment and over 12 years of online therapy experience, matching members with qualified professionals.

Speaker 126 And just like that lunch with an old friend, once you do reach out, you'll wonder, why didn't I do this sooner? Start now at betterhelp.com for 10% off your first month.

Speaker 32 I turned off news altogether.

Speaker 80 I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything.

Speaker 135 It's the rage bait.

Speaker 134 It feels like it's trying to divide people.

Speaker 47 We got clear facts. Maybe we could calm down a little.

Speaker 27 NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the facts.

Speaker 67 Let's move forward from there.

Speaker 27 NBC News, reporting for America.

Speaker 18 So what was it then?

Speaker 119 According to Leslie Abramson, there was only one relevant question to consider in the Menendez murders.

Speaker 18 Why did these killings occur?

Speaker 73 A question the brothers decided to answer themselves.

Speaker 73 No one had ever seen televised testimony like this before.

Speaker 3 The brothers testified in graphic, emotional terms about what they said were the darkest secrets of their family.

Speaker 18 Between the ages of six and eight,

Speaker 84 did your father have sexual contact with you?

Speaker 128 Yes.

Speaker 135 We would be in the bathroom and

Speaker 135 he would put me on my knees and

Speaker 31 have oral sex with him.

Speaker 22 He would break me.

Speaker 84 Did you ask him not to?

Speaker 84 Yes.

Speaker 23 I just told him that I didn't want to do this

Speaker 24 and

Speaker 22 that it hurt me.

Speaker 22 And he said that he didn't mean to hurt me.

Speaker 22 And he loved me.

Speaker 78 He just said that it was our secret,

Speaker 22 that bad things would happen to me if I told anybody.

Speaker 122 Lyle testified his father stopped abusing him when he turned eight.

Speaker 58 He said for years he had no idea his brother was a victim to.

Speaker 74 Then Eric took the stand.

Speaker 17 He told me that he was going to train me how not to

Speaker 17 not to feel pain. He would have me give him oral sex and he would stick the needles or the tacks into my thighs as he was doing this.

Speaker 3 Eric testified that when he refused to cooperate with his father's demands.

Speaker 17 He came back with the knife. He put it on my neck.
He said, I should kill you and next time I will.

Speaker 46 Reaction to the brothers' testimony was, to say the least, polarized.

Speaker 80 You either totally believed that the brothers had been abused, or no, you thought the whole thing was a complete crock of you-know-what?

Speaker 25 But the defense said, the brothers' explosive claims were just the lead-up, the backstory, to what really prompted the murders.

Speaker 18 What do you believe was the originating cause

Speaker 18 of you and your brother ultimately winding up shooting your parents?

Speaker 17 Me telling Lyle that, uh...

Speaker 18 You telling Lyle what?

Speaker 18 Was it you telling Lyle about something that was happening?

Speaker 22 My dad.

Speaker 22 My dad had been less than me.

Speaker 62 Lyle testified that he confronted his father three days before the murders.

Speaker 135 I told him I would tell everybody everything about him, that I would tell the police, and that I would tell the family.

Speaker 12 Then, according to Lyle,

Speaker 40 his father said something that sounded like a threat.

Speaker 135 He said, we all make choices in life, son.

Speaker 135 Eric made his, and you've made yours. I thought we were in danger, that he would kill us, that he would get rid of us in some way.

Speaker 5 Later that day, Eric testified, his mother saw him crying.

Speaker 17 She said something like, oh, I understand. I understand a lot more than you think.

Speaker 73 And that, said Eric, is when he realized his mother was aware of the abuse.

Speaker 81 She says, I know, I've always known when you think I'm stupid.

Speaker 62 And so the brothers decided to drive down to San Diego and buy shotguns for protection, they said.

Speaker 14 Two days later, said Lyle, he and his father had another argument about the abuse.

Speaker 51 After which, Lyle said his parents went into the den and shut the door.

Speaker 12 And

Speaker 135 I thought they were.

Speaker 135 Going ahead with their plan to kill us.

Speaker 21 The brothers knew Jose and Kitty kept two rifles in the house.

Speaker 18 So what did you do?

Speaker 135 I ran upstairs to tell my brother that it was happening now.

Speaker 14 They ran out to the car, loaded their guns, and burst through the den door.

Speaker 17 I was just firing as I went into the room. I just started firing.

Speaker 18 What was in front of you?

Speaker 19 My parents.

Speaker 84 At some point, was your gun empty?

Speaker 135 Yes.

Speaker 135 I could see somebody

Speaker 135 moving. It seemed like moving in the direction of where my brother should be.

Speaker 83 So Lyle said he returned to the car, reloaded the shotgun, and ran back into the house.

Speaker 18 And what did you do after you reloaded?

Speaker 24 I ran around and shot my mom.

Speaker 77 So, did they act because of the unreasonable belief they were defending their own lives?

Speaker 79 Yes, said the defense.

Speaker 7 A classic case of imperfect self-defense.

Speaker 46 Perfect nonsense, said the prosecutor.

Speaker 8 She grilled vile on cross-examination.

Speaker 32 When you put the shotgun up against her left cheek and you pulled the trigger, did you love your mother?

Speaker 63 Yes.

Speaker 32 And was that an act of love, Mr. Menendez?

Speaker 17 It was confusion, fear.

Speaker 32 They slaughtered their mother in a way that was so cruel, she got up to run and they went out and they reloaded and they put the gun up to her cheek and blew her brains out.

Speaker 32 I'm sorry, that is the height of cruelty.

Speaker 51 The prosecution believed the brothers were flat-out lying about the abuse and the events leading up to the murders.

Speaker 46 Once they finally heard the tapes recorded by therapist Jerry O'Zeal, which had been locked up in litigation until very late in the trial, it just confirmed what they believed.

Speaker 138 And the man is going to make a decision to kill my mother without Eric's consent.

Speaker 50 The defense actually played the tape

Speaker 76 to take the sting out of it.

Speaker 138 What Eric and I did took it earlier beyond belief.

Speaker 39 Detectives Ola, remember, had never heard the tapes before, on which there were supposedly candid confessions.

Speaker 46 But on the recordings of their therapy sessions, the brothers never once mentioned the issue that was now the very core of their defense.

Speaker 30 Why did you ever murder your parents? Oh, because they were sexually molesting us. That never came out.

Speaker 72 Because, said the prosecutor, it was a fiction.

Speaker 45 Eric and Lyle latched onto it as they sat in jail.

Speaker 32 It is the acting thing of your career, right? I mean, you're actually fighting for your life.

Speaker 32 So,

Speaker 32 I was of the opinion that it had been fabricated.

Speaker 25 That was the prosecutor's view.

Speaker 8 But is that what the juries would believe?

Speaker 40 In December 1993, they retired to consider a verdict.

Speaker 61 Hazel Thornton was on Eric's jury.

Speaker 127 We took a show of hands, and it was men against women, murder versus manslaughter.

Speaker 46 The main issue, said Hazel, was the brother's story of the abuse.

Speaker 58 The women believed them.

Speaker 113 The men did not.

Speaker 73 Did discussions get heated?

Speaker 22 Oh, yes.

Speaker 25 Those tumultuous tumultuous deliberations carried on into the new year.

Speaker 88 It's kind of a sort of a living hell, though, isn't it?

Speaker 73 Just kind of sitting there waiting for somebody to make up.

Speaker 130 It does cause your blood pressure to go up.

Speaker 32 Yeah, it's hard.

Speaker 68 Nothing came easy for the men and women deliberating the fates of Lyle and Eric Menendez.

Speaker 41 On top of infighting, there were delays from a massive 6.7 magnitude earthquake that hit the San Fernando Valley.

Speaker 135 The court finds based on...

Speaker 41 And then after six months of trial, two juries...

Speaker 59 one result.

Speaker 136 Therefore, I find that the jury is hopelessly deadlocked and the court declares a mistrial.

Speaker 77 The jurors couldn't make up their minds.

Speaker 14 They were split nearly evenly between murder and manslaughter.

Speaker 83 D.A. Gil Garcetti vowed to retry the case.

Speaker 121 We have an ethical, a professional, and moral responsibility to go forward with this case as a first-degree murder case.

Speaker 45 But before that second trial could begin, O.J.

Speaker 13 happened. And after O.J.

Speaker 118 was found not guilty in the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, suddenly the stakes were even higher.

Speaker 32 Mr. Garcetti was very upset about the fact that we couldn't win the big one.
Yeah.

Speaker 32 And when O.J. Simpson went home at the end of his trial, it was very hard in the DA's office.
We were, you know, nationally considered to be kind of losers.

Speaker 95 The second Menendez trial began just eight days after O.J.'s acquittal and six years after Kitty and Jose were killed.

Speaker 50 The same judge, the same case, Leslie Abramson, was back defending Eric.

Speaker 5 But this time the trial was fundamentally different.

Speaker 27 The first major ruling was no TV camera in the courtroom.

Speaker 45 Now this time, there was one jury for both brothers, and not as much testimony about the alleged physical and sexual abuse.

Speaker 50 Cousin Diane, for example, was able to testify just not about Lyle telling her that his father had molested him.

Speaker 58 One reason that couldn't come in was because this time around, Lyle didn't take the stand to lay the foundation about abuse in the first place.

Speaker 27 In between the two trials, there were allegations that he was asking people to fabricate testimony.

Speaker 40 Lyle was alleged to have encouraged people to lie for the defense.

Speaker 77 He asked a friend to make up a story about giving their brothers a handgun for protection.

Speaker 56 And Lyle's former girlfriend told police he had asked her to falsely claim Jose had sexually assaulted her.

Speaker 27 So the defense decided they couldn't put him on the witness stand. So Eric Menendez had to carry the ball for both brothers.

Speaker 27 And he was a good witness, but he was not as strong as Lyle Menendez had been at the first trial.

Speaker 83 And that expert testimony about the impact of the alleged abuse on the brother's state of mind?

Speaker 85 Judge Weisberg severely limited the number of experts because he felt their testimony was repetitive.

Speaker 53 Dr.

Speaker 85 Vickery was not allowed to testify about abuse.

Speaker 39 I was shocked.

Speaker 70 I said, well, they've gutted the defense.

Speaker 78 I mean,

Speaker 78 there is no defense without that.

Speaker 89 That specific ruling was in large part due to the objections raised by the new prosecutor leading the people's case, Deputy D.A.

Speaker 8 David Kahn.

Speaker 121 It's one thing that we have asked the judge to do is to limit the so-called abuse excuse.

Speaker 139 The approach that the prosecutor David Kahn took was to attack at every at every turn and not give any free passes there.

Speaker 86 Andrew Wolfberg is a lawyer today, but back then he was a 25-year-old member of the Menendez retrial jury.

Speaker 139 At the time, the defense attorney was saying this was a family that was win at all costs. The ends justify the means.

Speaker 139 To say that their parents had abused them was almost like the ends justified the means. Let's make up this story about abuse.

Speaker 62 But one thing jurors figured was not made up were those confession tapes.

Speaker 29 This time, the prosecution got to use that wildcard the way they wanted to, as, if you will, their smoking gun.

Speaker 62 And they played a section where the brothers seemed to have no remorse about what they had done.

Speaker 138 He missed just having his people around. I miss not having my dog around.
I could make such a grocery house.

Speaker 139 That really just was like a punch in the gut.

Speaker 8 Prosecutor Kahn told the jury those Ozeal tapes were absolute proof of premeditation.

Speaker 62 Like when Lyle revealed that he and Eric discussed the question, should we kill our mother too?

Speaker 138 I didn't even want to influence him on that issue. I just wanted to say bottom of him a couple days.

Speaker 52 As testimony wrapped up, Judge Weisberg's last ruling, and quite possibly the most important one of all, was this.

Speaker 27 The jurors would not be allowed to consider an imperfect self-defense.

Speaker 56 Why?

Speaker 85 Because after the first trial, the California Supreme Court ruled that imperfect self-defense didn't apply since the brothers were not in imminent danger.

Speaker 73 Would you think, in retrospect, had you been offered imperfect self-defense that you might have maybe started in a different place or come to a different conclusion?

Speaker 139 I'm pretty confident that we would not have because we literally started from first-degree murder and when every element was satisfied, we were done.

Speaker 90 This time around, the deliberations were quicker, more congenial, and certain.

Speaker 137 The verdict said was guilty on all counts with special circumstances.

Speaker 67 Guilty of first-degree murder.

Speaker 68 But the fates of Lyle and Eric Menendez were not the only headlines.

Speaker 14 More came in the penalty phase.

Speaker 3 Dr.

Speaker 11 Vickery finally got to testify about the alleged abuse, and under oath, he had to admit something.

Speaker 77 The doctor said Leslie Abramson asked him to delete notes she felt could be viewed as evidence of premeditation, including, he said, the brothers discussing what it would be like to live without their parents a week before the murders.

Speaker 95 She said, look,

Speaker 78 if you don't take this out, if you don't take these sections out, you're off the case.

Speaker 24 Really?

Speaker 63 So I said, well, okay, Leslie, I'll think about it.

Speaker 66 And reluctantly, he said, he agreed.

Speaker 46 He said he felt the brothers needed him.

Speaker 8 The California Medical Board punished Vickery 34 months probation.

Speaker 60 Abramson disputed Vickery's version of events.

Speaker 5 In the end, the Menendez brothers were sentenced to life with no parole.

Speaker 18 I think this fairness has been drained out of the system.

Speaker 50 After their conviction, they filed many appeals, but none stuck.

Speaker 41 And then in 2017, Lyle agreed to an interview with me.

Speaker 86 And not even in the 90s.

Speaker 45 And he talked about how much things have changed since the 90s.

Speaker 19 My father looked like the perfect family man. I think we've come to realize today that that can be very deceiving.

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Speaker 46 Lyle Menendez spent much of his life sentence at Mule Creek State Prison in Northern California.

Speaker 47 Back in 2017, he agreed to speak with us by phone.

Speaker 24 Hello.

Speaker 69 Hello.

Speaker 69 So here we are, all these years later.

Speaker 109 What is it?

Speaker 46 Lyle was 49 years old at the time and eager to explain how outrage and and fear led him and his brother to murder their parents back when he was 21.

Speaker 6 Lyle said he felt betrayed when Eric confided to him days before the murders that their father was still molesting him.

Speaker 113 And it finally just

Speaker 88 exploded. Definitely.
I was silent through everything.

Speaker 88 My father's rapes, I said nothing. For you to have done this to my brother, it's like I kept my part of that sort of devil's pack.
And you didn't. you know.

Speaker 88 And my mother, just, you know, you let your children wake up in the home of a child molester every day?

Speaker 71 Lyle testified in the trial that not only did his mother cover for her husband's actions, she also, on one occasion, was sexually inappropriate with him.

Speaker 90 And said Lyle, more than a quarter century after the murders, those feelings of anger and hurt were still close to the surface. My mother was very cruel.

Speaker 90 I believe she just very much resented my brother and I from early, early on.

Speaker 113 As if you and Eric had come between her and your father.

Speaker 19 Yes. Okay.
Exactly. But certainly that weekend of my parents' death and what happened is when I really learned that my mother knew

Speaker 19 all along and really had made a choice, you know. I mean,

Speaker 19 she made her choice to choose her marriage over her children.

Speaker 41 Lyle said after Eric revealed he was being abused, Vile confronted his father and threatened to expose him.

Speaker 19 But I mean, I certainly felt,

Speaker 19 I think, fear of my father's reaction to the possible exposure, something that we

Speaker 19 just knew was just unthinkable. We knew that we were in some grave danger.

Speaker 49 When did you and Eric decide to kill your parents?

Speaker 19 We didn't decide. to do it.
There was a moment we finally

Speaker 19 just kind of got overwhelmed with this panic and emotion and made the decision to run in that room.

Speaker 72 But there was this irrefutable fact, the prosecutor pointed out.

Speaker 5 Lyle walked out to his car to get more ammunition, reloaded his gun there, and walked back inside the house to fire that final shot directly into his mother's face while she was still alive and crawling desperately to get away.

Speaker 113 They saw that as the evidence of premeditation and cruelty. I certainly in the room wasn't making kind of decisions in a chaotic situation like that, but

Speaker 113 you know, reflecting afterwards, you know,

Speaker 113 it haunts me.

Speaker 51 It does haunt me. We reminded him of what the original prosecutor still says about him.

Speaker 113 That Lyle is still trying to avoid some level of responsibility by blaming abuse when the abuse doesn't appear to have been so bad as to cause a person to do that.

Speaker 19 I don't know how you can take more responsibility

Speaker 19 than taking the stand

Speaker 19 and admitting that you killed your parents, explaining fully why, talking about things that are horrific things to talk about about your childhood.

Speaker 113 The other comment that would come up was: well,

Speaker 113 they could have just gone out and got in the car and driven away.

Speaker 58 They didn't have to do this.

Speaker 25 They would still be alive,

Speaker 113 and you wouldn't have to have anything to do with them.

Speaker 113 Yeah. Well, I certainly in the state of mind I'm in now, that would be the decision I I would make.

Speaker 14 But, said Lyle, back then he thought.

Speaker 14 A person like my father is not going to allow you to just take something that will ruin his life that he has so carefully crafted. He's not going to.

Speaker 58 He's not going to. No, but

Speaker 113 you could have left. That's the point I'm trying to make.

Speaker 19 But leave and do what? Leave and just wait for yourself to be killed in a parking lot?

Speaker 16 They didn't believe anyone could help them, said Lyle.

Speaker 53 Not even the police.

Speaker 23 Speaking of which, that 911 call Lyle made.

Speaker 19 Who is the person that was shot?

Speaker 19 My mom and my dad. My mom and dad.

Speaker 7 So

Speaker 113 grief-stricken on that call and lying at the same time.

Speaker 19 I don't think I was grief-stricken. I think I was just absolutely broken down with stress.

Speaker 19 Both of us were just in such a state of trauma that I just.

Speaker 19 It just poured through on that call. It made it very easy to make that call, really.

Speaker 58 But you could have told them, instead, you misled them.

Speaker 116 Why that? I mean,

Speaker 116 I don't think I was going to tell the Biblios Police Department that, you know, I killed my parents and here's a lie. And they were going to go, okay, go back home.

Speaker 116 So just self-preservation at that point.

Speaker 86 Lyle strongly denied the prosecution's claim that he and Eric killed their parents for money.

Speaker 67 Furthermore, he said he didn't think their case should have even gone to trial. This case should have been settled.

Speaker 67 There are like 200 to 300 parasite cases a year where a parent is killed by a child, and they are almost all related to abuse, and they are almost all settled. This case, they picked out as different.

Speaker 53 Yeah, but wow, it was different.

Speaker 19 Exactly. And I think that it was very easy, because it was Beverly Hills, my father had a lot of money, to sort of sell this headline that these brothers killed for money.

Speaker 79 But if they didn't kill for money, why didn't they mention the abuse to Dr.

Speaker 39 Ozile?

Speaker 99 Or even at first to their attorneys?

Speaker 5 I was horrified. I did not want to tell the public and my family and people in the jail know that I've been sexually abused.

Speaker 19 I didn't want that out.

Speaker 68 But of course, it did come out.

Speaker 19 My father looked like the perfect family man.

Speaker 19 And

Speaker 19 I think we've come to realize today that that can be very deceiving.

Speaker 113 He was an extremely successful immigrant who achieved the American dream.

Speaker 116 From outside looking in, your family looked pretty good.

Speaker 113 You were two handsome guys, very smart, going to good school, had everything.

Speaker 24 Right, exactly. That kind of image

Speaker 24 is not easily pierced with this kind of news. And certainly not

Speaker 24 back then, and not even in the 90s when I was in trial, were people really believing that someone like my father was a child molester. or that someone or that a mother would cover it up.

Speaker 24 And they couldn't get past that. In the the 90s, I wasn't just up against the prosecution.

Speaker 24 We were up against the myths that boys aren't sexually abused, that CEOs and upstanding people like my father aren't child molesters, that those are deviants in the shadows, that dysfunctional families don't happen in wealthy homes.

Speaker 24 So we had to deal with those myths back then.

Speaker 24 Today, a lot of that is debunked and people realize now that child molesters come in all these forms, all walks of life, and that voids are sexually abused.

Speaker 7 That is exactly what others are now saying.

Speaker 85 In fact, there's a wave of support for the Menendez brothers and

Speaker 4 new evidence that may give them a chance at freedom.

Speaker 26 I knew that this was new evidence that could upend the whole case.

Speaker 68 After their sentencing, Lyle and Eric Menendez asked to be housed together.

Speaker 42 They did not get their wish.

Speaker 113 You haven't seen Eric in how long? Wow.

Speaker 113 1996?

Speaker 119 Getting to be a long time. Yeah,

Speaker 119 I miss my brother every day.

Speaker 8 In early 2018, that changed.

Speaker 90 The brothers were reunited at the Richard J.

Speaker 3 Donovan Correctional Facility near San Diego.

Speaker 46 Outside of prison, a new chapter in the Menandez Saga had also begun.

Speaker 27 I knew the moment I saw it, I knew that it was something of potentially major importance to the case.

Speaker 73 In March of 2018, Robert Rand, who was writing a book about the case, visited with Jose's sister Marta and got his hands on a letter that Eric had written to her son Andy.

Speaker 95 Andy, who testified at the trial, had been close to Eric growing up.

Speaker 60 He died in 2003.

Speaker 52 And in it, Eric wrote, referring to his dad.

Speaker 40 Every night I stay up thinking he might come in.

Speaker 86 I need to put it out of my mind.

Speaker 8 I know what you said before, but I'm afraid.

Speaker 46 You just don't know dad like I do.

Speaker 58 He's crazy.

Speaker 46 He's warned me a hundred times about telling anyone, especially lyle

Speaker 46 the letter's undated but events referred to suggest it was written in december 1988 eight months before kitty and jose were killed but eric never says exactly what it was that was bothering him

Speaker 89 He complained, although he never used the phrase sexual abuse, he never said anything about sex.

Speaker 122 Maybe he was just going to come in and yell at him.

Speaker 116 Apparently, Jose Mernandez was a kind of a, you know, not nice man.

Speaker 67 So.

Speaker 27 Look, Keith, you can spin it one way or the other way.

Speaker 12 Sure.

Speaker 27 But I'm 100% convinced that he was talking about sexual abuse.

Speaker 45 So convinced, Rand flew to California to hand carry the letter to Lyl and Eric's appellate attorney.

Speaker 8 But Rand didn't stop with the letter.

Speaker 119 Now a full-fledged advocate for the brothers, he enlisted the help of journalist Neri Inclan to track down another lead.

Speaker 113 Get a call from Bob, Bob, who's been on the Menendez case incessantly.

Speaker 74 Right.

Speaker 26 Regarding Menendez and... Menendez and Menudo.

Speaker 73 Menudo, the boy band Jose had signed to RCA Records.

Speaker 97 Rand had heard off-the-record innuendo about Jose and members of the group.

Speaker 14 But it would be about a year of talking to former Menudo members before finally.

Speaker 26 The one Menudo who would go completely on the record and tell me in horrendous detail what was going on was Roy Rosello.

Speaker 46 At 13, Roy Rosello was picked to join Menudo by Edgardo Diaz, the manager of the band.

Speaker 89 What did he tell you about Jose Menendez and him personally?

Speaker 26 He said Edgardo Diaz said to him, listen, we have this record producer who is going to give us this gigantic deal, and he may like you.

Speaker 26 And you need to do whatever he tells you to do.

Speaker 68 Incon interviewed Roy for a documentary that aired on Peacock, Menendez plus Menudo.

Speaker 3 Roy told Inclan it was the fall of 1983 or 1984, and he was driven in a limo to the Menendez house in New Jersey.

Speaker 46 There, said Roy, he was given wine, and then Jose took him into a bedroom and raped him.

Speaker 30 That's the man here

Speaker 65 that raped me, this guy.

Speaker 95 He said he saw Jose again backstage at Radio City Music Hall.

Speaker 26 Jose Menendez has an entire family sitting in the audience, his wife and kids. And he demanded sex of Roy in a bathroom.

Speaker 26 And Roy said, no, no, I can't do this. I don't want this.

Speaker 80 I have a show to do.

Speaker 26 And he said that Jose Menendez said to him, I own you. I bought you.
You're going to do anything that I tell you to do.

Speaker 40 Inclan said Roy didn't come forward any sooner because he didn't know his story would make a difference for the brothers.

Speaker 26 And when I told Roy, Roy, do you understand that you are now a key witness in the Menendez case? And he's like, what are you talking about?

Speaker 26 He had no idea

Speaker 26 that what he had been through would have any impact in that case. And mind you, when those cases were going on, Roy

Speaker 26 was

Speaker 26 on alcohol, on drugs, dealing with his own trauma.

Speaker 83 Roy has also accused the band manager, Edgardo Diaz, of rape, an allegation Diaz denied.

Speaker 68 Roy has given Eric and Lyle's attorney a statement saying Jose abused him at the Menendez house and at Radio City Music Hall, and along with the Eric letter, It was offered as evidence in the brothers' latest appeal, which was filed in the spring of 2023.

Speaker 50 And then nothing much happened.

Speaker 59 Until this fall, when Netflix debuted the new season of the Ryan Murphy series called Monsters, the scripted show did not claim absolute accuracy, but portrayed abuse dramatically and generated a tsunami of interest in the case.

Speaker 54 I think that they should be walking free on the sidewalks.

Speaker 38 It got the TikTokers really going.

Speaker 85 They deserve a life too.

Speaker 54 The Menenez brothers should be freed. They need to be freed and they deserve to be freed.

Speaker 55 I'm someone that believes in second chances.

Speaker 46 It got Kim Kardashian going too, as she told Variety on a red carpet.

Speaker 55 They never got a fair second trial, and for me, watching Ryan Murphy's monsters show,

Speaker 55 it really opened up and showed me so much about abuse.

Speaker 41 She's made criminal justice reform a big part of her life. After meeting Lyle and Eric while on a visit to their prison, she penned an essay for NBCNews.com saying, it's time.

Speaker 59 Though the family was not entirely united, Lyle and Eric's cousins plus one aunt came together on the courthouse steps to say the same.

Speaker 8 Kitty's sister, Joan.

Speaker 130 It's time to give them the opportunity to live the rest of their lives free from the shadow of their past.

Speaker 61 And just a week later, the Los Angeles DA made a big announcement that could change everything for Lyle and Eric Menendez.

Speaker 31 Face about 35 years of behavior in prison, there gives up plenty of evidence, ample evidence.

Speaker 78 There's always more to the story.

Speaker 36 To go behind the scenes of tonight's episode, listen to our Talking Tatelines series with Andrea and Keith available Wednesday.

Speaker 45 As the story of the Menendez brothers has blown up on social media, some people,

Speaker 3 like the original prosecutor Pam Bozanich, think the world has gone mad.

Speaker 32 If you use rational thought on this case, they should stay in prison for life without parole. If you use emotion, then, oh my god,

Speaker 32 why are they still there today?

Speaker 23 Let them out tomorrow.

Speaker 41 The rest of the world seems to think, okay, let them out, let them out.

Speaker 32 I actually don't think it's the rest of the world. I think it's a lot of very vocal people.

Speaker 88 TikTok world.

Speaker 15 The TikTok world.

Speaker 6 She still believes the abuse defense was fabricated.

Speaker 71 And that letter offered as new evidence.

Speaker 45 Bozanich is skeptical.

Speaker 32 I'd love to know when that letter was written.

Speaker 90 You don't think it was written when they say it was written?

Speaker 32 No, I don't. I think people fabricate things.

Speaker 100 No surprise.

Speaker 8 Bozanic has made some enemies along the way.

Speaker 7 Told us she has had to delete her email account.

Speaker 56 And.

Speaker 32 I have armed myself. I took lessons even.

Speaker 24 Really?

Speaker 32 Yeah, I went to the range and used a gun. I went out and bought a Mossberg shotgun, which is what they used to kill their parents.
I figured it was easy to learn.

Speaker 45 Alan Abrahamson, who covered the trials once upon a time, is also pretty unpopular with the Pro Menendez folks.

Speaker 29 People who are supporters of Lyle and Eric Menendez really,

Speaker 80 really need to stop with the hate.

Speaker 5 And in all the online rage, he said, the facts are getting lost.

Speaker 80 The TikTokers are getting one thing fundamentally wrong about this case. This case is not about Lyle and Eric Menendez being abused or not.
Instead, it's about whether or not

Speaker 80 Lyle and Eric Menendez were in imminent fear for their lives on the night of August 20th, 1989.

Speaker 80 They were not.

Speaker 60 When it came to their mother, Kitty, he said, No one ever suggested that she threatened them.

Speaker 80 This is the thing that gets lost in the discussion about the Menendez case.

Speaker 80 Under the law of the state of California, even if you think Jose Menendez was the worst human being in the history of human beings, blowing the mother's face off

Speaker 80 is by itself,

Speaker 80 by itself,

Speaker 80 first-degree murder and assuredly, under any circumstance, grounds for life in prison without parole.

Speaker 31 But I believe that they have paid their debt to society.

Speaker 73 Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon has other ideas.

Speaker 31 That the life without the possibility of parole be removed.

Speaker 52 With Lyle and Eric's family members at his side, the DA recommended the brothers be re-sentenced, meaning a chance for freedom.

Speaker 42 And for a reason having virtually nothing to do with their crime, though he accepts they were brutal murders, and nothing to do with whether or not they were molested, though he believes they were, and not a thing to do with the much-talked about new evidence, the Menudo connection, the Eric letter.

Speaker 58 Have you been able to authenticate that letter?

Speaker 31 We haven't. This is not about whether they committed a crime.
They did. This is about 35 years of rehabilitation under state law.
Can they be released safely?

Speaker 62 Thus did George Gascon sidestep the heated debate on social media and instead...

Speaker 31 Are they likely to be safely reintegrated in the community.

Speaker 82 Because he said they become leaders in the prison community.

Speaker 31 Creating green space in prison. Working with prisoners that had severe disabilities to help them.
Learning sign language, one of them. They're both married.

Speaker 31 So the decision for me was very straightforward.

Speaker 90 But Gascon's decision, as he himself admitted, is by no means unanimously supported by his own staff.

Speaker 31 We have people in my office that are completely against any kind of relief.

Speaker 24 I don't like this at all.

Speaker 31 They want the brothers to be in prison for the rest of their life.

Speaker 46 So does Kitty's brother, Milton Anderson,

Speaker 3 who says they murdered for money and should stay right where they are.

Speaker 21 In fact, through his attorney, Milton accused the DA of using the death of his sister and brother-in-law to get votes in this past election.

Speaker 100 Not true, said the DA.

Speaker 69 And you're telling me this has absolutely nothing to do with your election process?

Speaker 31 I'm absolutely telling you it has nothing to do with my election process. Right.

Speaker 29 He lost that election.

Speaker 56 So now what happens?

Speaker 25 The new DA has said he will have to review the case before deciding what to ask the court to do.

Speaker 53 TikTok will be watching.

Speaker 65 The brothers will be watching.

Speaker 94 And after,

Speaker 49 Lyle and Eric Menendez will rejoin the great wide world

Speaker 95 or stay where they are in their small one.

Speaker 15 That's all for now.

Speaker 79 I'm Lester Holt.

Speaker 35 Thanks for joining us.

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Speaker 108 There are lots of options when it comes to nicotine satisfaction.

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Speaker 105 Nicotine is an addictive chemical.