Shownotes Transcript
Thank you.
What is going on, true crime fans? I'm your host, Heath. And I'm your host, Daphne. And you're listening to Going West. Hello, everybody. Hope you had a lovely weekend. We had a birthday party for me, and it was so much fun. Thank you, everybody, who sent me some amazingly kind wishes. That was so nice to read everything. So thank you, guys. And also, big shout out to Heather, Jane, Kelly, and Paul, who all recommended that we cover this story over on our email. There's a link in the description below.
There has been so much chatter around this case lately because of the new Netflix show on this case. There's about to be a new documentary on this case. I think it's coming out today, actually. So, yeah, a lot of people were really left enraged by the Netflix show. Others are just more interested in the real details of what went down.
I mean, there is a lot of controversy here. Yeah, I mean, this case has definitely been heavily discussed in the media since it happened in 1989. Because as many of you guys know, it's just one of those big cases in American true crime history. But we felt like because there are some movements in the story as of late, and there are more updates to come,
this just really felt like a great time to cover it. And we know that many of you will be familiar with this, but we did a serious deep dive here, which is why we are bringing you two parts. So this is going to be the full in-depth breakdown of this twisty case. We're going to play audio clips from the
We're just going to go start to finish, including, like Heath said, the latest in what is happening with Lyle and Eric. So thank you guys for tuning in for this massive story. And without further ado. All right, guys, this is part one of the Menendez Brothers and also episode 444 of Going West.
So let's get into it!
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We are here looking out on a familiar vista, the Vista of Los Angeles, because the city of Beverly Hills has been rocked by a drama at once riveting and chilling. It was nearly a year ago that one of this town's most ambitious, charming, promising new executives and his wife were savagely murdered in their home, a murder so strange everyone searched the dark byways of movie fiction for explanations.
until the prosecutor said that he had the darkest explanation of all, and he charged the two sons with the crime. Kitty Menendez, a homemaker, and Jose Menendez, an executive, a rising star in the entertainment business. They had two sons, Lyle, 21, Eric, age 18.
This Sunday night at 10:00 p.m., Kitty and Jose were sitting in sweatshirts watching television when someone walked in and blasted them with shotguns. You've never seen somebody who's been shot with a shotgun at close range, you know, the terrible damage that that does to a person. Charging the kids is the most outrageous, outrageous thing ever. This boy killing father and mother?
On March 26th of this year, Eric and Lyle Menendez were each arraigned on two counts of murder. They say they left home, went to a movie at this theater. They said they called a friend to meet them at this restaurant, but instead came back and found their parents dead.
Lyle and Eric will have their day in court, but for now, the boys who once lived in a mansion in Beverly Hills live in maximum security in these cells in Los Angeles County Jail.
In August of 1989, two brothers entered their parents' Beverly Hills mansion and shot them multiple times, killing them almost instantly. When police arrived, the men maintained that the murders had taken place while they were at the movies, which police initially believed.
The brothers steered the police as well as their friends and family toward the conclusion that their parents' murder was the result of a mafia hit. But did the police believe them? Well, you're going to find out. But before diving into the crime itself and what happened afterwards, we're going to discuss the parents in question as well as how and why this crime occurred, which is just as important as the event itself. So,
Mary Anderson, better known as Kitty, that's what we're going to call her today because everybody who knew her did, came from humble beginnings. She was the youngest of four children born to parents May and Charles Anderson on October 14th, 1941 in Oak Lawn, Illinois, which is a southwest suburb of Chicago.
Her father, Charles, owned an air conditioning and heating company and did well for himself. But when Kitty was in elementary school, Charles fell in love with another woman and left May to support Kitty and her siblings by herself.
In June of 1950, when Kitty was nine years old, her father Charles married a woman named Doris, blending their families. Because Doris came with two sons from a previous marriage, and she and Charles had two of their own. So eight children total. This was Charles Jr., Brian, Joan, Floyd, Bullock.
Roy, Robert, and Kitty. I think it's very interesting to me that they went with Boyd after they had the Floyd, but all right, Floyd Boyd. Now, Kitty didn't really take kindly to this change, and Charles left the family desperate for money
for money amid this divorce. So Mae was actually forced to take a job at Midway Airport. She did not make very much money there, but she needed to do this in order to support her family. But Kitty blamed her father for this and she grew withdrawn, brooding, and antisocial. Still, her siblings say that she was beloved by her family and that they all had good relationships with each other.
Her brother Brian described her as, quote, stunningly beautiful. And I mean beautiful on the outside and even more so on the inside.
After graduating high school, Kitty enrolled in Southern Illinois University's communications program and began working in the broadcasting department, producing radio and television dramas. And it was on campus during her senior year in 1962 that the course of her life would change because she met freshman Jose Menendez, who would charm her into being his wife the very next year.
So now that we've talked about Kitty a little bit, let's get into the Menendez brothers' father, who was Jose Menendez. And he was born on May 6, 1944 in Havana, Cuba as the youngest of three, born to Maria and Jose Sr., joining older sisters Teresita, or Terry, and Marta.
The Menendez family was very well respected for their athletic skills. I mean, Jose's mother Maria was inducted into Cuba's Hall of Fame for swimming, and Jose Sr. was a talented soccer player who also owned an accounting business. So in 1959, as the Cuban Revolution began, the Menendez family concluded that they should relocate to the United States and wound up settling in Hazleton, Pennsylvania.
In high school, Jose excelled in both academics and, of course, athletics, and he was even granted a swimming scholarship to Southern Illinois University, which is, again, where he met Kitty Anderson. Kitty's college roommate recalled that it seemed like Kitty had been hit with a bulldozer when she began falling for Jose. It was just like this instant connection.
But their families initially didn't really understand this match. Kitty's family was surprised that he was three years younger and that he had an ethnic background, while Jose's family disapproved of Kitty's parents being divorced and also felt that Jose, who was still a teenager in his first year of college, was still a little bit too young to be married.
But regardless of any of that, in the spring of 1963, Kitty graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree and they eloped, tying the knot on July 8th, 1963. They settled into New York City and Jose was granted an athletic scholarship to Queens College, where he completed his education, graduating with an accounting degree.
And with that accounting degree, Jose secured a job for an accounting firm while Kitty taught grade school. But she really dreamed of being a broadcast journalist. Remember, she previously worked in broadcasting and she hoped to go back to school soon to secure her master's degree so that she could continue to pursue that career.
By 35, Jose had been promoted to executive vice president of U.S. operations for Hertz Rental Car, which became a subsidiary of RCA, or Radio Corporation of America, in 1967. So, oh, sorry, did you want to say something about that? Oh, I was just going to say, I think that's so interesting that RCA...
essentially bought and acquired Hertz car rental. And that's how, that's how Jose kind of came into play with RCA. Yeah. Because this was a big, this actually really affected his life because then he moved into entertainment in so many different ways as his career unfolded. And it was all because really because of this acquisition, because RCA,
A little bit after this happened, Jose moved over to RCA's record label and was promoted to chief operating officer. So he was personally responsible for building out their Latin music division and eventually helped groups like the Eurythmics, Duran Duran, and popular boy band Menudo sign to the record label. But as his career soared,
Kitty kind of took a backseat and she put her dreams aside to tend to their home life because they really wanted to start a family.
So the same year that RCA acquired Hertz, again 1967, when Kitty was 25 years old and Jose was nearing 23, Kitty became pregnant with their first child. On January 10th, 1968, Joseph Lyle Menendez, better known as Lyle, was born in New York City.
After his birth, the family relocated to Blackwood, New Jersey, where two years later, on November 27, 1970, their second son, Eric Menendez, was born. They later relocated again to Hopewell Township, New Jersey, which is situated between New York City and Philadelphia.
But as Jose's career was really ramping up, you know, he's made the switch into entertainment and he was making the family a lot of money. Both boys attended the prestigious Princeton Day School. And like their father, they showed an interest in and a talent for sports from a very young age.
because both boys were avid swimmers and soccer and tennis aficionados. But Jose eventually forced them to choose one sport, and both boys chose tennis, which was also Jose's preference, even though, remember, Jose was a swimmer.
In 1986, when Lyle and Eric were teenagers, Jose was hired by Live Entertainment. This company is a division of Corolco Pictures, which produce films like Rambo, Field of Dreams, and Basic Instinct. So with this move more into film, he moved the family to the West Coast, where they settled in a sprawling 8,000 square foot home on 14 acres in Calabasas, California, which is an affluent neighborhood in L.A. County.
Now, Kitty was initially displeased with the move. She really wanted to stay on the East Coast, but she always deferred to Jose to make the family's major decisions. A business associate of Jose claimed, quote,
Now, although Jose was working in media and had been for years, what he truly wanted was to pursue a political career. He always had dreams of one day being a senator. He never fully pursued these dreams, but just so you guys know, that is what he wanted. He wanted to be, you know, the guy in charge. Yeah, he's always kind of just moving up the ladder with every step. You know, he's going from this to this to this, always making bigger moves every time.
Well, now let's talk about their personalities for a moment. And I know that this is maybe gonna kinda seem a little off-colored at first, since they are victims in this story, they're victims of murder, but this is what those close to them have reported, so we're just kinda retelling what friends have said here.
So Kitty was described as quiet and antisocial, and most people claimed that she had very few friends. And like Kitty, Jose had very few personal connections as well, possessing more clients and business associates than genuine friends. But he had plenty of enemies. Jose was known as a harsh man who didn't care to spare anybody's feelings.
For example, once when Lyle was being criticized for treating waitstaff poorly at a restaurant, Lyle said pretty disgustingly, quote, I get that from my father. They're here to serve me. I hate that so much. Yeah, I guess they are, but you don't have to be a dick. There's just so much entitlement in that quote. But, you know, things are just going to get worse. So let's move on here.
Though Jose himself had a modest start in his career washing dishes at a restaurant, his unapologetic approach to business earned him few allies. In addition to being a ruthless, dogged businessman, Jose had faced accusations of being a serial abuser who beat his sons. And this is a major topic of this case, and there's a lot more of that to come.
Now as we mentioned, both Lyle and Eric were tennis prodigies. But Jose had no problem causing a public scene when one of them lost a match. Either unable to control his outbursts, hoping that, you know, maybe embarrassment would teach them a lesson, or both. Like I said, he was just kind of a harsh guy.
As Lyle headed towards college graduation, he applied to Princeton University, apparently pressured by his parents to gain acceptance into like this Ivy League school. They really wanted him to do very well in school. Yeah, they're kind of trying to model these two perfect people, successful people. And I'm sure a lot of the Ivy League college choice people.
had to do with, you know, image and not necessarily because this is the best move for Lyle, but more so the best for their image. Like, oh, my son goes to Princeton. You got to keep up the looks. You know what I'm saying? Unfortunately, it appears they cared a lot about that. But, you know, after Lyle applied to Princeton, his first application was actually rejected and he wound up at a community college for his freshman year.
And it was then that he met Jamie Pasarsic, a woman five years his senior who was also a hopeful tennis pro. So they dated for a few months and even became engaged, but their relationship was pretty fickle, and they were on and off for about four years until after the murders took place. So while in community college and dating her, Lyle told his parents his dream was to marry Jamie, who was working as a waitress at the time, and open up a restaurant.
And actually, his parents scoffed at this. They thought that that was a little too lowbrow for the looks. So Lyle applied to Princeton for a second time to appease his parents. And this time he was admitted, though more for his father's influence and tennis prowess than for his grades. And I'm almost positive that his father had something to do with that second application. Oh, 100%.
Well, in the fall of 1987, 19-year-old Lyle began his first semester at Princeton. But by the end of that semester, he had already gotten into trouble with the university because Lyle was caught plagiarizing a project in his Psychology 101 class, and he was suspended from school for a year, returning home to his very disappointed parents back in California.
And that year, again, 1987, was a relentlessly difficult one for the family with Kitty's depression reaching new depths. She's remembered as having been in an increasingly catatonic state leading up to the murders, and her family noticed that her drinking was getting out of control. She would even spike her morning cups of coffee. So she was really relying on alcohol at this point. Yeah, and I feel like she's also just really bored because now...
Her sons are kind of more grown. She doesn't really have to take care of them anymore. Jose's the business guy. What is she doing? She's just sitting at home going shopping during the day. She's got endless money and she's just bored and depressed. Yeah, and she never got to pursue her passions in her career. Right. She's very much living her life for her husband. And that is really taking a toll.
So on November 8th, 1987, Kitty was brought to a hospital for a drug overdose. Her nurses recall that she attempted to continue stealing pills during her stint there. And when she was reevaluated by a psychiatrist, it was suspected that she had a personality disorder and that she had been suffering from panic attacks and intense anxiety leading up to her overdose.
You know, it's almost like she had everything, but she had nothing at the same time. Yeah. Or she felt like she had nothing. So at this point, she was already taking a daily antidepressant, but was also known to take as many as three Xanax in a day.
So in an effort to get into a better place for herself, she began seeing a therapist, but he later said that he believed she was not being entirely truthful with him during their sessions, which of course would be no benefit to her. She did divulge, however, that she was aware of Jose's frequent infidelity, including an eight-year affair with a woman named Louise who lived back in Manhattan.
Kitty was so affected by these affairs that she sadly attempted to take her own life no fewer than three times. Family and friends remember that Kitty was growing increasingly unstable around this time, and Jose even chose to remove the boys from the home on occasion to keep them away from her.
At one point, Kitty told Jose's sister Marta that she wished her sons had never been born. And this is not the first time that she said that. Oh yeah, she's going to say it more times. Meanwhile, Jose's affairs continued, which just made Kitty's depression worsen. She wrote a suicide letter telling Jose that she loved him, that she wanted him to move on and fall in love again after she was gone, and that their boys were her gift to him.
Now, six months before she was murdered, Kitty confided in her psychiatrist that she was hiding shameful, sick, and embarrassing secrets about her family. So she has this information. She's going through a lot mentally.
And she's keeping a lot of it to herself. This is going to circle back. We're going to talk about what this, you know, sick and embarrassing secret about her family is. Oh, yeah, that is going to be a massive topic in these two series. But she did not confide what this was with her therapist. She just kind of was vague about it in that way.
So Jose decided that the family needed a fresh start, hoping to make things better for everybody as if just moving house is going to change freaking everything. So he moved his family very quickly. This was a very fast move from their beautiful home in Calabasas to another beautiful home in Beverly Hills.
Jose purchased a stunning Mediterranean-style home on North Elm Drive for $4 million, but it recently sold for $17 million. Because...
Not only is this an amazing neighborhood, but it features a massive pool and hot tub, tennis courts, which is obviously perfect for the Menendez family, seven bedrooms, nine bathrooms, totaling to a whopping 9,000 square feet. That is a big-ass home. Yeah, so you can imagine...
Those who have lived in this house have been wildly successful, but residents since it was built had included Elton John, Prince, and the Prince of Saudi Arabia. So this is how much money the Menendez family has.
Now, the following year in 1988, things weren't very much better here. This move really didn't provide, you know, a total reset, of course, because, you know, they're not moving very far. Calabasas is really not that far from Beverly Hills, so I don't know why he would think it would kind of, you know, help them reset, but it really didn't. It's just that weird mental like, oh, new house, new, you know, new year, new me. Yeah, that type of thing. And it's never that's never how it is.
Well, while he was home, 20-year-old Lyle got into even more trouble when he, 17-year-old Eric, and a friend concocted a burglary scheme to rip off their friend's parents. Craig Signorelli, who was one of Eric's best friends, found the combination to the safe of the father of one of their other friends, and the three of them raided this safe, stealing jewelry, money, and property from this house.
Excluding Craig, Lyle and Eric struck again on their own for a combined grand total of over $100,000 in stolen goods. That's a lot. That is a lot, and, you know, definitely should not have been a slap on the wrist, but... Jose apparently blamed Craig for the burglaries instead of his own sons, and Craig recalls that once, when the boys were driving up to the Menendez's house...
Jose threatened to kill Craig, and Craig remembers him having a gun on him when he did this. After being charged with the burglaries, Jose reported to the Malibu Sheriff's Department and returned most of these stolen items, writing an $11,000 check for the items that were not recovered. And actually, Jose forced Eric to take the fall for his brother, because he was still a minor at 17, and Lyle was already in trouble at Princeton, so he's like...
Well, I guess, you know, I don't want Lyle to have to go to jail, so we're just going to blame it all on Eric here. Yeah, he's kind of trying to put a bandage on the situation to make sure Lyle's future isn't ruined by his own actions. Yeah, essentially. But I mean, it just feels like there's zero accountability, and I can't believe that he would actually blame this on one son and not the other. It makes sense, though, with what we know about him, and I feel like...
He does seem to have kind of this obsession with his sons, like I said, being perfect and successful and on the right path or on the path that he believes is right instead of the path that they want to be on or that they should be on. Sure. Yeah.
Well, the Menendez family lawyer cut Eric a deal, and he received only probation and mandatory counseling, which is where he met his therapist, who we're going to talk about a lot in this episode, Dr. Leon Jerome Ozeal, who now goes by Jerry. Now, like Jose, Craig's dad also worked in the entertainment industry, and the boys eventually hoped to use the connection of their show business fathers to have a screenplay produced.
And they actually wrote three of these screenplays together, and their favorite, entitled "Friends," featured a calculated, remorseless killer who committed "parasite," or the murdering of one's parents, in order to make off with his trust fund and get even with his parents, which, I mean, if you guys don't already know, is extremely foreshadowing. And Eric even proudly let his mother Kitty read one of these scripts, and she apparently did not mince words when she reviewed it.
In early 1989, 21-year-old Lyle returned to Princeton yet again. But question is, how did he get back to Princeton?
but quickly found that he couldn't swing the workload. You know, he wasn't meant to go to this school. So when he couldn't do it himself, couldn't do the work himself, he would occasionally pay his friend and roommate to write his papers for him. But this roommate's writing was very poor. His grammar was sloppy. So Lyle was receiving inadequate marks. Like he's literally paying somebody to do it and they're doing a shitty job.
Yeah. So he's getting nothing out of this. Nothing in return. So it's no surprise that Lyle dropped out that year, though Jose demanded that he stay in New Jersey during the school year. Princeton is in New Jersey in order to keep up appearances. Yeah. And we keep saying this over and over about the appearances thing, but the proof is in the pudding. He's asking his son not to come home, to stay in New Jersey forever.
even though he's now not in school there. Who cares? Like who, who care who, you know what I mean? Yeah. And like we said, Lyle didn't have the grades to be attending Princeton. His parents just essentially required that he go there so that he could have an Ivy league degree under his belt, but he just wasn't suited for it at all. He, he probably should have gone to a different college. Him going to community college seems like it makes a lot more sense. I went to community college. There's nothing wrong with it, but again, it's,
It's the image thing. And this, I think, really just creates such a bad situation all around. Well, it's not even just that. I mean, I'm sure that it's, you know, it's possible that he could have gone to a different university. It's not like you have to go to a community college specifically, but Princeton was just on a different level from him. So I'm sure if you went to like USC or some other place like that, maybe he would have done all right. But it was just so forced. Yeah, it was forced. And there was just a lot of high expectations there.
Well, to keep that up, he did stay in New Jersey, but then went back to California that summer. And in the summer, 21-year-old Lyle really butted heads with both of his parents, but especially his strong-willed, controlling father. He even opted to stay in the guest house instead of the main house in order to put some space in between himself and his parents.
And of course, Lyle has to live there because he didn't make it at Princeton to get a degree to start a career. And I'm sure his parents wouldn't let him go get a regular job like many others have to get in order to support themselves. So he's kind of at their mercy here in a lot of ways, even though he is also 21. So he can legally make his own decisions. But it seems like both brothers felt very under their parents' control.
which we can really see that they have such power. And they also grew up with this deep sense of entitlement regarding money and success. So I couldn't see either of them necessarily taking it upon themselves to go swim on their own at that age.
Yeah, definitely. It feels like if they don't have to, why would they? I mean, their parents are rich. They have plenty of space to do whatever the hell they want. They got a pool, a hot tub, tennis courts, whatever they want. So, you know, it would be hard to convince a 21-year-old who has everything that they want or need in life that they should go do something on their own and take responsibility. You know what I mean? Yeah, and I do think that this...
growing up this way must have really affected their emotional maturity because they've been handed everything. And a lot of people who come from money don't necessarily grow up from this. It really depends, in my opinion, how the parents are. Did you make them get a job when they were 16? Did you give them everything that they wanted? Or did you make them work for it? It doesn't seem like they've really had to work for anything. And so being 18 and 21, even though that's still so young, they probably...
in a lot of ways, were much younger. Well, I think, yeah, I think it really depends on the person and how they're raised specifically because we can talk about the fact that
Absolutely. And just
just more on that as well, the fact that they have been handed so much and even down to the burglary. Lyle was an adult when that happened. He was 20 years old and his dad still picked up the pieces. So why at 21, when he's in college, would he go try to make things work on his own? He's probably thinking, well,
Dad's going to do it for me. Dad's going to make my life perfect. Dad is going to handle all the situations that I need. So as you can imagine, you know, having the same gripes with their parents because they were raised, of course, the same way. Lyle and Eric were close confidants, but still they hadn't shared everything about their individual experience with their parents. Right.
In late July 1989, 18-year-old Eric watched a TV miniseries that prosecutors later credited with planting the seed of wanting to take the lives of his parents.
Billionaire Boys Club, starring Judd Nelson of The Breakfast Club, first aired on NBC in 1987 and tells the true story of Joe Hunt, who murdered a fellow investment partner in an attempt at a quick payout. And whether or not this truly gave the brothers any ideas, we'll never know. We've talked about this in other episodes before. If
horror movies or shooter video games influence somebody truly. But either way, these thoughts were very much brewing at this time.
During another explosive argument in the Menendez home in the days leading up to their deaths, Kitty and Jose were laying into each other and for once, Lyle attempted to stick up for his father. And irate by this, Kitty yanked the hair off the top of Lyle's head.
peeling away the toupee that she knew was glued onto the crown of his head. And this was a secret to most people who knew him, but Lyle had been losing his hair since he was 16 years old. So when this started happening, Jose fixed him up with a hairpiece that was glued to the top of his shaved head, which would make it incredibly painful if it was peeled off, especially without warning.
But according to those close to the family, Jose believed that his son would present better in business with a full head of hair, which is so silly to me. So it seems like those were his intentions behind securing this hairpiece for his son. Yeah, it wasn't like, oh man, I feel bad for you, son. Like, I know how that feels or whatever, like losing hair. He's just like, oh no, this is definitely... Everything has to come back to business for Jose. You know what I mean? So true. Whereas like...
that happens to a lot of people. You're just losing hair. There's nobody should be, you know, made to feel bad about that. Um, but actually Eric didn't even know that his older brother was losing his hair. This was such a, a secret thing, but Kitty made sure that the whole family was there to see her rip it off specifically to embarrass him. That's such a messed up thing to do to your son. Truly. Yeah.
Bye.
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Well, the day before the murders on Saturday, August 19th, 1989, Jose took the family out on a boat for the evening, embarking from Marina del Rey.
Tensions between the brothers and their parents were reaching a boiling point, and the boys claim in retrospect that they were worried that they were going to be killed by their parents, not the other way around. That's how high tensions were. The trip was supposed to be like this fun experience, but it was pretty much a disaster, setting the very tone for the following day.
Both Kitty and Jose got seasick during this trip, and because it was a chilly and brisk night for August, Lyle and Eric huddled on the bow of the boat, talking, and kept away from their parents for most of this journey. Upon their arrival home, the brothers left the house and drove to the nearby UCLA campus in Westwood to discuss their parents' increasingly erratic behavior, their overwhelming indignation toward them, and likely to plot what was going to happen next.
When the brothers arrived home, it was pretty late by this point, and they had been locked out without their keys. So, they awoke their parents to be let in, and Kitty allegedly exploded on them once again. They remember her exclaiming, quote, "I wish you'd never been born." The next day, Sunday, August 20th, 1989, 21-year-old Lyle and 18-year-old Eric avoided their parents basically as much as they could that day.
Eric left the house by himself, and Lyle spent the day swimming and playing tennis. Their friend and tennis coach, Perry Berman, called the house responding to a message from Lyle, but Jose actually answered this call telling Perry that the boys were at the Beverly Center shopping, though Lyle was at home at this time. Lyle called Perry back around 5:00 p.m., and they agreed to meet up later that evening.
Perry was headed to the Taste of LA Food Festival with another one of his friends, Todd Hall, but the brothers told Perry that they were going to see a movie, and Perry suggested that they maybe meet up afterwards, possibly around 10 p.m.
According to Lyle and Eric, they initially intended to see the movie License to Kill, which many of us know is a James Bond movie, but it was sold out at the time, so they told police that they saw Tim Burton's Batman, starring Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson, for a second time instead, which ended around 10.15pm at the Century City Mall, which was about 10 minutes from their house and by the time they got there, it was already 10.
And by the way, I just wanted to mention for anybody who loves that movie, that is my favorite Batman. I love that Batman. I was waiting for you to say that. So Kitty and Jose were home that night. They were sitting on the couch in the family room watching the James Bond movie, The Spy Who Loved Me. Lots of James Bond going on. Now, the home alarm was turned off. The housekeeper was off for the day as it was Sunday. And Jose was sleeping on the couch.
Just after 10 p.m., a neighbor of theirs named Avril Krom, who lived two houses down from the Menendez's, reported hearing popping sounds, what she thought were, quote, Chinese fireworks.
But her son didn't really agree and he was unnerved enough that he wanted to call 911. But she didn't think it was any sort of criminal activity. You know, they lived in a very safe neighborhood and we will post photos of the house and the street view for those who want a visual of this area. Now at 10.20 p.m., Perry and Todd left the Taste of L.A. after Lyle and Eric failed to arrive.
Lyle called Perry, who is now in bed. Perry was in bed telling him that he and Eric thought that the Taste of LA was downtown, not in Santa Monica, and that they had gotten turned around trying to find it. So Perry concluded that they should just get together during the week. You know, no big deal. We'll hang out another night. But Lyle insisted that he needed to see Perry that evening to talk about his tennis strategy. Remember, Perry is his coach.
So Perry reluctantly agreed and offered to meet them at the Cheesecake Factory in Beverly Hills instead, located on North Beverly Drive.
Minutes later, Lyle called back and asked Perry to meet them at the house so that Eric could get his fake ID. Remember, Eric is 18. But Perry declined and gave them an extra 10 minutes to stop at the house before meeting him at the Cheesecake Factory. So remember this, that the brothers were like, no, come to our house. And Perry doesn't want to do that. He just wants to meet them at the restaurant. But remember that they wanted him to go to the parents' house.
So Perry arrived a while later, but after surveying the restaurant, Eric and Lyle were nowhere to be found. Well, at 1147 p.m., Beverly Hills police received a call from Lyle Menendez, who was sobbing and telling the operator that his parents had been shot. And here is a clip from that call. Hello?
No, no, no.
Were they shot? Yes. Were they shot? Yes. They were shot? Yes. What happened?
I have a hysterical person on. I'm trying to get to him further. Other units responding. Is the person still there? What happened? We have units around. What happened? I don't know.
Who shot who? I don't hear anything. You came home and found who shot? My mom and dad. Do you know if they're still in the house, the people that did the shooting? Get away from me.
Okay, hang on. Let me talk to Eric. Who was the person that was shot? My mom and my dad. Your mom and dad? My mom and my dad. Okay, hold on a second. Okay, we're on our way over there with an ambulance. Okay, I gotta go. Okay.
Hello, this is police department. Yes. Okay, I want you to come outside. Okay, please come out the front door. I never did my brother.
Responding officers approached the house quickly and cautiously in case the shooters were still present. You know, they had no idea what was going on. And both of the brothers came running out from the house. And they came out from the front of the house, by the way. And when they did, naturally, they were ordered to get on the ground. And officers noted that they appeared distraught and that there was no blood on their clothes.
According to the officers, they continued to scream, oh my God, and I can't believe it. The bodies of 47-year-old Kitty and 45-year-old Jose Menendez were found inside, still in the family room, having been decimated by 12-gauge Mossberg brand shotguns.
Jose had been hit in the back of the head while still sitting on the couch and his body had collapsed there, but Kitty had dropped to the floor likely in an attempt to escape, but she hadn't gotten very far. She was found on the floor a few feet away from her husband lying on her right side.
Every bone in her face had been broken and most of her teeth were gone from the blasts of the shotgun. Because the numbers vary depending on the source, but it's believed that Kitty was hit by as many as 10 shots. Jose, as many as six. Outside in the quiet neighborhood, Eric shouted, "'I'm gonna kill him! I'm gonna torture them! Who would do this? And we're gonna get those guys!'
The murders of 47-year-old Kitty and 45-year-old Jose were the first murders in Beverly Hills in over a year. Moe Angel, the officer that was assigned to handle Lyle and Eric in the immediate aftermath of their parents' deaths, quickly clocked that their morning was a bit overboard and said that the brothers' histrionics raised red flags right away. So by 1:30 a.m., the brothers were in the police station being questioned.
In Eric's initial interview, he told detectives, quote,
After that, we saw them and I immediately started screaming and so I went upstairs and Lyle called the police immediately. Lyle was the next one to be questioned and corroborated this account of events, remembering his brother going hysterical and running upstairs and that they called police from an upstairs bedroom. As police attempted to scrounge up a suspect, they asked Lyle about the general consensus of his father.
Lyle admitted that his dad was quote "a pretty ruthless businessman" and that he had definitely made some adversaries in his line of work. He explained quote "I could see how he could step on a lot of toes. He's very curt. He treats my brother and I, you know, extremely well but firm. And he was, he's a strong disciplinarian. He holds the family together well and he runs the show. At work it's the same way, you know, he yells at a lot of people and he's running the show and he handles everything."
But still, Lyle said that his father was a quote, "great man." Lyle also claimed that his mother had been depressed on and off throughout her life, that she had been intermittently suicidal, and that she had even recently purchased a gun. When speaking of Kitty's death, Lyle said quote, "That's the hardest thing for me. I mean, her death, because she never really got to do anything with her life, you know?"
She sort of served it with my father. I don't think he's treated her very well. When things were kind of getting better, he was at home more often and stuff, and we just went on a fishing trip and the family seemed more together.
She seemed real worried about things. In fact, she recently bought a rifle. And so we had two rifles in the house, and we thought that she was nervous about something because she went out and just bought a rifle. And didn't tell my dad why or anything. And that's the first thing I suspected when I walked in the house. Only my brother and I know this, but she was on the verge of contemplating suicide. She was very... She was very edgy and suicidal in the last few years. And... But...
Police actually missed out on testing the boys' hands for gunshot residue, which they maintain was a huge mistake. After their questionings, the brothers were released in the early morning hours of Monday, August 21st, 1989, as family members and media alike began to find out about the gruesome murders.
Spectators began flooding the area while Lyle and Eric retreated to a hotel as their home was currently sealed off as a crime scene.
Their friend Perry, of course, was also questioned and police initially believed that he may have been involved since they were supposed to hang out that night. But among the prevailing theories were drug ties, though they leaned largely on stereotypes due to Jose's Latino heritage or a business associate who had a distaste for Jose, of which there seemed to be many. But more pervasive were the rumors swirling that the deaths were the result of a mafia hit.
One investigator admitted in the aftermath of the murders, quote, "...the murder stunk of organized crime. They were there to take care of business and to make a message clear."
While mourning their parents, the brothers were tasked with arranging their funerals and wanting to smooth over the rumors that one of Jose's business contacts or connections to organized crime had gotten him killed. Live Entertainment, who he worked for, offered to foot the bill for the funeral and even hired a publicist to plan it.
So this is really showing the influence that Jose had. He wasn't just another employee. He was a pretty big deal in the company, and they didn't want any kind of negative association because of his murder. Oh, absolutely. Because you know that rumors are going to swirl, and live entertainment knows that people are kind of talking about maybe some of his business connections, and they really don't want to look bad here. This is making big headlines. Yes.
So in preparation for the memorial the next day, Lyle and Eric headed out shopping on Thursday, August 24th. They both picked up sports coats and then popped into a jewelry store where they purchased two Rolex watches. Lyle's cost almost $12,000 and Eric's was another $5,000 or so, totaling nearly $17,000 for the watches.
They handed over their father's American Express card, which authorized them to charge up to a quarter of a million dollars.
At the time, they were staying at the Hotel Bel Air, which cost them $1,300 a night. But Jose's company was covering the bill for them, as well as out-of-state family members who came in for the funeral. So speaking of the funeral, just a few days after their murders on Friday, August 25th, 1989, 400 people gathered at the Directors Guild of America to bid farewell to Kitty and Jose Menendez.
The brothers arrived nearly an hour late in a limousine and eulogized their parents with the help of family and friends for over an hour. Both men made speeches, but attendees noted that they seemed remarkably composed and devoid of emotion.
Toward the end of the ceremony, the Milli Vanilli song, Girl I'm Gonna Miss You, played as a send-off, which many scoffed at and found totally distasteful. And then after this, Lyle and Eric held a second memorial in Princeton, New Jersey as well.
Jose's sister Marta helped the boys navigate the concession of their inheritance because in the heat of an argument, Jose had actually told his sons that he had written them out of his will. So they were shocked to hear that they were still, you know, the beneficiaries of this will. Their aunt claimed that they would be getting between $8 and $14 million.
and before the inheritance policy kicked in, they would each receive $250,000 as payout from Jose's life insurance policy. So, they would basically be set. In the aftermath of their parents' murders, 18-year-old Eric seemed particularly rattled, while 21-year-old Lyle seemed to be able to kind of just resume his life.
Too spooked to live by himself, Eric went to stay with a cousin of theirs in the valley. And this was Enrique, or Henry, who recalls that Eric was so petrified by his memories of that night, that he often slept on the floor next to him, or even crawled into bed with him. On one occasion, Eric blurted out, quote, "...if Lyle did it, I'll kill him."
Around this time, Eric admitted to his cousin with creeping guilt that he hadn't been completely honest with the investigators in his recollection of events of the evening of August 20th.
Eric told Henry that he and his brother had been separated for about 10 minutes, theoretically giving Lyle enough time to commit the crime, though the brothers told the police that they had not been separated at all that night. And Henry suspected that this in itself was a lie and that they had been apart for longer than that.
Robert Rand, who was a journalist for the Miami Herald, had secured interviews with the brothers in the immediate aftermath of the murders. And he actually later wrote the foremost source of information of this crime, which is a book entitled, "The Menendez Murders: The Shocking Untold Story of the Menendez Family and the Killings that Stunned the Nation," which we actually read in preparation for this episode.
Two months after the murder, Eric told Robert, quote, I think that possibly if Lyle and I would have been home, if we would have been able to do something about it, maybe my dad would be alive. Maybe I'd be dead. You know, I mean, I don't know. I wish I definitely would give my life for my dad's.
Now, this case is just going to get stickier and stickier, and there is so much to come, including confessions, murders,
motive, audio recordings from their testimonies at trial, and just a ton of other information that is going to sway your opinion one way or another on this story. And because this case is so well-reported, there was far too much to discuss in just one episode, so we will be releasing a part two this week on Thursday, not Friday. We're doing a day early just because with part two, we want to keep it a little closer.
Yeah, you guys are gonna be in complete shock. I mean, I didn't know all of the details of this case. Of course, I knew about it, and I knew some of the details, but when you really, really get into everything...
I think you guys are going to be truly shocked. So make sure you stay tuned. We will have that part two out for you guys on Thursday, as Daphne said. Yeah, and like Heath mentioned in the beginning of this episode, there are a lot of movements still being made to this day with new evidence, which we will be diving into. Giving you guys the absolute latest on this case. ♪
Thank you so much, everybody, for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes. Thank you guys so much for listening to this episode. I know you guys already probably have a little bit of an idea about, you know, who Kitty and Jose were. And you might have a little distaste in your mouth about them.
But things are going to get a little crazy. Obviously, not trying to victim blame here. They were the victims of murder. But I think with everything that's been coming out lately and just, you know, all the details and the testimony...
I don't know. Some of you guys might actually change your mind here. I think forever. There's been such a division with this story of people either feeling one way or they're feeling the other way. But yeah, I do think that especially lately as kind of another perspective has really been highlighted, people are totally flipping.
Like this is, this feels like a very recent thing in the last few years and particularly the last couple months of people saying, wait a second, this feels, this feels different than what I thought it was. Yeah, exactly. So we want to hear your guys's opinion. Go make sure you give us a follow, uh, head over to our discussion group over on Facebook and, uh, yeah, let us know what you think about part one. We also do have, um, photos on our socials on Instagram. We're at going West podcast also on Facebook, like Keith said, um,
And in the next episode, we will do a little recap in case you guys are listening to this right away. Don't worry. We're going to do a little recap and then tell the rest of this gripping tale. So thank you guys. And we will see you in a couple of days for part two. All right, guys. So for everybody out there in the world, don't be a stranger.
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