The Menendez Brothers: Killers or Victims?!

Today's video is kindly sponsored by hellofresh. Use code kendall ray10 to get 10 free meals on your first four boxes of Hellofresh. Hello guys, welcome back to my channel, so for this week's video we will see a case that is also very famous. Very, very requested from you, I get messages about this all the time, tweets, comments on Instagram and of course many of you have submitted it to my real case suggestion form, which I really appreciate when you do, it helps me to maintain everything a little. More organized today we are going to talk about the Menendez

brothers

and this case is really wild, honestly, it plays out like a movie, it is a little bit older case, it took place in the 80s, but it has resurfaced. in advertising lately mostly about ticking, which has been really interesting.

I feel like a lot of people who may have experienced seeing all of this when it was happening may feel differently about the case now, looking at it with fresh eyes, it's very controversial. case, I'm sure you will have many opinions, of course, leave them below. I love hearing what you have to say about these cases, but I think a lot of people are not in this case, whether they are in one. One way or the other there is a lot to go over here today, so let's go ahead and delve into the Menéndez family so that their story really begins with the patriarch of their family, their father José Enrique Menéndez, who was born on May 6, 1944 In Havana Cuba his father was a former soccer star and his mother was a former swimming champion and José really looked like his parents he was very competitive he was athletic and usually took first place he was very successful in all the sports he played basketball football swimming when José was about 15 years old in 1960, things got really crazy in Cuba.

Fidel Castro had taken full control of military and political power and was now the prime minister of Cuba. Joseph's parents felt it wasn't safe for him there, so they broke up. Sending him to the United States when he was only 15 years old. So he came here alone and his parents decided to stay in Cuba to try to protect what they had left. The regime confiscated many of their properties, but they hoped to do so. he could protect some so they had to stay there, but they sent him a loan to the US and at first he lived in his cousin's attic, it was definitely a difficult adjustment for him, but luckily for him he still played sports so which was some kind of sense of normalcy and he eventually got a swimming scholarship, so he ended up going to Southern Illinois University and in 1962 he met Mary Louise Anderson, who called herself Kitty Kitty was just a few years ahead of he in Siu and was born in 1941 she grew up in Chicago and was a former beauty pageant queen, so he was very attracted to her, they hit it off immediately and started dating in 1963, Kitty ended up graduating from Siu and José decided that he had just finished school and he. he decided to leave when she graduated, he was only 19 at the time and they actually decided to elope after this, they moved to New York where Kitty was a teacher for a while and José ended up enrolling in Queen's College in Flushing.

He decided that he was pretty good with numbers, so he was going to get his degree in accounting and during that he worked as a dishwasher part-time. Finally, José and Kitty became pregnant with their first child and it was a boy, his name was Joseph Lyle Menéndez. He was born in New York on July 10, 1968 and they ended up calling him Lyle for short. At that time, Katie decided to leave her full-time teaching job because she wanted to be a full-time mother and she was very excited to be a mother. Mom eventually the city became too much for them so José decided to move the family to New Jersey, specifically they moved to Blackwood, New Jersey which is a small unincorporated community and then on November 27, 1970, they had their second son, Eric, and around this.

At the time he had a big change in his career, he ended up going into the music industry, which was very different from accounting, but he really liked music and he liked money, so he decided to switch to the industry. of music and this was a good step for him because in the 1980s he was a top executive at RCA Records and signed with several very popular groups, the most popular being Duran Duran. The family moved to a million-dollar property in Princeton, New Jersey, and both children attended Princeton Day School, which is a very prestigious school. and a top-notch private school and as soon as the kids were old enough to walk and talk, expectations were set for them that they needed to succeed, they needed to excel in academics and athletics, and they weren't the type of parents. they were fine with trying a sport and just having fun with it and getting the consolation trophy.

No, they wanted their children to be the best of the best, so one sport that they really got into and were very good at was tennis. Exceptional tennis players actually spent a lot of money on training and classes and all that and their mom Kitty was like their cheerleader, she was always at every practice, every game cheering them on and at that time from the outside it looked like they were living a very comfortable life. and happy in 1986, José decided he wanted to leave the music industry and get into the film industry, so of course where do you have to go if you're going to be in the film industry?

Hollywood, so pack the whole family. and they all headed to California in 1987. Jose started a new job working for live entertainment, which was a newly formed company that was already in trouble, just to give you an idea, the company had lost over 20 million dollars the year previous, so in reality they were not. He was doing very well, so Kitty was a little nervous, you know, moving across the country to this failing company, but José was confident that he could jump in and save the business and it worked because in his first year he increased profits. at eight million dollars and the second year he raised it to double that $16 million and was known for doing whatever it took using some pretty ruthless business tactics, but it definitely paid off because he was eventually named CEO and when he started In that position, his salary was 500,000 per year with up to an additional 860 million in bonuses, so the company took out insurance policies, life insurance policies for all the company's top executives, live entertainment, he obviously got even. with Joseph and, in fact, they became beneficiaries, which I suppose is quite something. common practice for large corporations, but they also had a second policy for employees that was worth five million dollars and for this they could have anyone as a beneficiary at work.

Joseph was really applauded and praised by the people above, but everyone who worked below. Joseph really hated him, in fact it's safe to say that the people he worked with despised him. He had a horrible reputation with women and could also be aggressive. He was very intimidating. Ruthless and merciless. He didn't hesitate to reprimand or outright fire anyone. the company that made even a small mistake and was also known for some pretty shady business practices to inflate the value of the company and not only was he at work but he also had several affairs with people he worked with and a lot of them They weren't just small encounters, they were full-fledged adventures, long-term relationships that occurred behind Kitty's back;

However, it's assumed that Kitty probably knew this was going on and just turned a blind eye because she was making a lot of money and wanted to keep the family together, so it's possible she knew, but we'll never know for sure, but even though She probably had a feeling that all of this was happening or she could have known directly, but she still made an effort to get as involved in his life as possible, she insisted that she go on business trips with him because she didn't trust him and José was working. a lot, he went on business trips all the time, so that was his way. from spending time together he was, wow, wow, work as hard as he can, be as successful as possible.

Here is a very strange detail about José. He was ashamed of his Cuban heritage. At one point they offered him a letter of congratulations on his success. a Hispanic businessman and was offended by that, he didn't want any of his colleagues to know about his past, where he came from or even what school he went to because he was ashamed that he didn't go to an Ivy League university and was determined for all of his children to go to an Ivy League school, so clearly the children were dealing with a lot of pressure simply by being José's children, he decided when his children were very young that they were going to go to Princeton, so at that time his My family lived in Calabasas, this is where I think some of the Kardashians live.

I'm not entirely sure it's a very elegant area. I drove by there once and they're really living, you know, the American dream, they rented a house while they were building their dream house, which was actually on top of the mountain and had 13 acres of land and, looking out , they seemed to have the perfect life, the American dream, they seemed like a perfect image of a happy and united family. The parents were super involved in the kids' lives, they were always at their sporting events, very involved in who they hung out with and their academics, especially Kitty, they expected the kids to excel in school as much as they did in tennis, but that wasn't the case they did more average in school, they weren't bad students by any means, but they weren't the best in their class or anything, but they really excelled at tennis, especially Eric, ended up ranking 44th in the nation for players 18 and under. and as they grew up they were very, very close, Lyle was very protective of his younger brother, Eric, and they did a lot of things together, they spent a lot of time together, they had a couple of friends here and there, but they really stayed closer. between them and several people who were friends of them said that they received interesting vibes from guys, sometimes some of their previous friends felt betrayed or betrayed by them, they grew up having to learn to be very cunning and aggressive and get what you want, that's what they learned from their father now, Lyle definitely had more difficulties in the family than Eric, there were a lot more expectations on him, just a lot more pressure in general to succeed and set a good example, and me.

I'm sure some of you who are the firstborn in your family can relate to this. I know, I definitely can. I think the firstborn definitely has more expectations than younger siblings. His father was quite brutal with him. We will talk much more about it. Actually, this, but one of the things Lyle did a lot of was shame him for his physical appearance and one thing he was very insecure about was the fact that he was going bald at 14 and his father forced him to wearing a toupee that's how concerned he was with his image he didn't want to have any imperfections in his children and the children definitely grew up learning that money is everything in life it's about going as far as possible being in first place being the most successful and make the most money you could definitely consider these two rats, you know it was their environment, but they had no concept of money, like when Lyle started driving, he wanted a Porsche right away and his father decided to have a little restraint and he said no. the Porsche, but both boys definitely struggled with confidence issues at the end of the day, even though they were nationally ranked tennis players, they never felt good enough for their father, Eric really started to have more problems as he As he grew up and finally started to rebel a little bit and started hanging out with the wrong people, you could say that Eric eventually started bringing Lyle with them and they all started getting together in a big group and at one particular moment they were all together and They decided they wanted to do something. rebels, so they decided to break into a friend's house and steal what was in his safe.

One of Eric's friends actually had the combination, so Eric Lyle, this friend, whoever went to another friend's house, stole the money from his jewelry, everything else that was in the safe and obviously these guys are rich, why do you need to do this for them? It was really the excitement all you know was the excitement after that they decided to plan another raid on a different house with their friend and then they did this eric and lyle decided they really liked the excitement of it all and decided what they wanted to do their own break-in without the friend at a different house and this wasn't just breaking in as a little prank, maybe stealing something small that they ended up stealing over a hundred thousand dollars from this person and actually almost got away with it, which It was very exciting for them, but then their friend who got cut off from the deal andplugged in the code for the first robbery decided They were criticized for not including him in the second robbery and the really interesting thing about all this is that of course his parents found out that they had done this because they turned them in to the police, but José was not angry because they committed this crime. he wasn't angry because they stole, he was angry because they got caught, he thought his son should be smarter than that, tougher than that, so he was disappointed in them and it turns out he actually knew the boys had been doing things like this over there.

There were a couple more houses that they broke into, did some minor things and he would go and try to pay them so they wouldn't report him to the police, but he couldn't do it in this situation and that was what bothered him. that they caught all the boys they ended up claiming it was just a prank they ended up returning the 100,000 and also paying an additional 11,000 in damages José came up with a plan to keep the boys out of jail. Lyle was an adult and about to start Princeton, so José decided that since Eric was a minor, he would plead guilty to the whole thing, to all the robberies they had been involved in. and take the blame, so Lyle basically got a slap on the wrist and Eric had to take the punishment, but it wasn't that bad, he just had to do some community service and get therapy, which was good for him .

That's when he was sent to dr. l jerome ozil and started seeing eric regularly around the same time the family decided they were going to move to beverly hills to a famous mansion and this place is very elegant it's a four million dollar six bedroom mediterranean style mansion Elm Drive has a patio, a tennis court, a swimming pool, a guest house and many famous people have lived in this house, including Michael Jackson, Elton John and a Saudi prince, so when they moved in, of course, they felt very good with themselves. They felt like they really made it, they had the perfect life or so it seemed and to make it even more perfect, Lyle, his first child ended up getting into Princeton like they expected he ended up deciding to study business because his father encouraged him to do so. followed in his footsteps, but once he got to school, it really wasn't his problem during his first year, he was put on academic probation for his bad grades, he practically didn't even go to class, he got into partying a lot and social life of the university. and then everything fell apart for him when he got caught plagiarizing in his psychology class and usually, when the kids got in trouble, José would come in and try to see if he could make the system work, maybe write a check to get them out of trouble. .

So he tried to do this, but the dean of the school wouldn't accept it, so Lyle ended up getting suspended for a whole year and this really pissed off José, but he wasn't mad at Lyle, no, of course, no, he was mad. with the university. for kicking him out, as you can see, Lyle and Eric were never responsible for anything, it was everyone's fault all the time and it was all about how can you game the system, so José ended up connecting his son with a job in entertainment in alive. He hoped that his son could just slide and maybe he could move up the ladder the way he did, but this was not the reality.

Lyle hated this job and was a terrible worker most days when he was late he acted like he wasn't. I didn't really mind walking around the office talking to people who barely worked and usually left early to go play tennis. His co-workers said that working with him was a nightmare. It was clear that he was only working there because his father got him the job and not because he really cared about the business in any way, but eventually all of this caught up with him and even having his father as CEO wasn't enough to save his job and He got fired from live entertainment in the meantime, Eric. he was still in high school he played tennis he also acted and actually won an award for best actor so he was really thriving he also really liked writing and he and his friend Craig spent a lot of time writing together and the two of them actually co-wrote a script together and they called it friends, no, no, friends, it was actually a story about a young man who murdered his parents to inherit all their money.

Now Kitty was really interested in her son's work, she was very proud of him. writing and everything he was doing, however, José didn't show much interest in it, that was very difficult for Eric, you know, he never felt like he was good enough for his father and it wasn't just like José, you know, Would you ignore your son? achievements and I wasn't that excited for him, I was downright disappointed with how the boys turned out, I didn't think they were good enough at all, I was very disappointed in Lyle because he dropped out of school because he failed at the job he had given him and he was also Disappointed in Eric and it seemed like he was even considering cutting them out of his will, we're not sure if maybe he was planning on cutting them out completely or maybe altering it a little so they would.

They got their money when they were a little older and more responsible, so there was a lot of tension between all of them, much more than anyone could have imagined at the time and that brings us to August 19, 1989. That day, José and Kitty. They had rented a yacht called Motion Picture Marine and took Lyle and Eric shark fishing in Marina del Rey at the time. Lyle was 21 and Eric was 18. They all set sail that morning on the yacht, the entire Menendez family, their crew, their captain. and the captain's girlfriend and the crew specifically noticed that that day the family seemed disconnected there seemed to be a disconnect between them they didn't spend much time together on the yacht they didn't seem to talk much at all the two boys ended up distancing themselves from Kitty and José, they went and left They sat on a different side of the boat than them and didn't seem to want to be near their parents at all.

The next day was August 20 and his maid was gone. They had a maid and she. it didn't work on sundays the kids ended up deciding to go see a movie together that night and jose and kitty decided to watch their own movie at home in their studio the studio is at the back of the house it's very dark and cozy and they were eating something ice cream vanilla, strawberries and just lounging around Kitty was in her sweatshirt and they were watching their movie in the studio having their ice cream when suddenly at 10 p.m. Eric and Lyle burst through the doors with guns and they were both obviously completely surprised seeing their sons standing there with shotguns in front of them and started shooting immediately.

They both entered and Lyle didn't hesitate at all. He shot his father in the back of the head. He used a Mossberg 12 gauge shotgun so it caused a lot of damage and the plan was for Eric to shoot his mother but he panicked and Lyle ended up having to do it for him because he almost escaped the room, ran away trying to get help and He ran on the couch. He walked out the door and down the hallway and that's where Lyle ended up shooting him at first. He shot her in the leg at close range and was so powerful that he broke the bone in her leg.

They continued shooting at them until they ran out of ammunition completely. but Kitty was still alive, she was lying on the ground, so the two went outside to reload their weapons and while they were outside, Kitty tried to get up and slipped on her own blood and fell to the ground when they came back. She continued shooting and was shot in the face, killing her. Eric actually shot her twice to make sure she was really dead. She was shot a total of 10 times in her leg, in her arm, in her chest and of course in her face and she was completely gone. unrecognizable it was brutal josé's death was brutal they also shot him six times he had a hole in the back of his neck the size of a fist this big because he was at such a short distance they had fired a total of 15 bullets and they decided to make it look like a blow from the mafia, so they ended up shooting their parents once again in the knees, aka knee brace.

Joseph was 45 when he died and Kitty was 47 and then at 11:47 a call came into the office. from Lyle, so it took a while for officers to get to the scene. It's strange that the kids expected the police to get there extremely quickly as soon as the shots were heard. They practically lived close to their neighbors. They thought someone had to call the police. Plus, there were officers. You know, patrolling in their posh Ridge neighborhood, this kind of thing doesn't happen there, they thought the gunshots would attract a group of cops, but they were surprised when they came out of the house and were waiting there, no one showed up and the cops, Of course, they appeared, but it was not as fast as one would expect.

Officers who were there said the two came out of the house screaming hysterically. They seemed really traumatized. Eric collapsed on the grass and curled into a ball. He was shaking, hyperventilating and screaming uncontrollably according to officers. Lyle was trying to comfort him but he was hysterical too. Officers who were there said his grief seemed genuine. They looked heartbroken, petrified as if someone had really come in and murdered their parents even though it was them. so they come in and it's a scene of horror, the lair is covered in blood, the bowls of ice cream are spilled and then their two bodies are there disfigured because they had been shot so many times that they were unrecognizable when I walked into the room and you know the television It was on and you know there was blood and body parts everywhere, so of course they started their investigation with the guys by talking to them, where were you guys tonight? and they had been to the theaters they said they had originally done.

I tried to watch License to Kill, but it was sold out, so they ended up going to Batman. After this, they said they went to the Los Angeles flavor festival and came back to the scene and the police found them very credible and believed everything. The story was so big that they decided to not even test their hands for gunshot residue, which is very strange because it is normally standard procedure for anyone who is at a crime scene or near a crime scene where there is weapons involved, but the emotions moved them greatly. that the guys were having, that they just thought there was no way they were involved in this, this was a random hit and was probably mob related because of their kneecaps and the guys really pushed this story, they thought it made a lot of sense too .

They said his father had some connections, possibly to organize crimes. There are people out there who would like to see him dead, but when the detectives began to investigate the mob theory a little more and analyze the crime scene, they felt that the mob theory just didn't. I didn't really check that the main reason is that this crime was complicated and seemed personal normally with a mafia attack they go in, shoot the person in the head, do it as quickly as possible and leave as little blood as possible, but this was a bloodbath, plus they thought Kitty probably would have stayed alive because she wouldn't have been the target and plus they thought there were plenty of other people who could have done this who hated José in his career, he had looked down on him , humiliated and fired tons. of people, there are many people who would seek revenge on him, they interviewed several coworkers and former employees, but nothing worked, no one seemed to be that angry with José, I mean, don't get me wrong, a lot of people hated him.

He had guts, but not enough to kill him and when people in the community found out that Joseph and Kitty had been murdered, they were very shocked, especially by Kitty's murder, because she was known as a very friendly person and loved by everyone, he seemed like a loving person. her mother, a devoted wife, why would anyone want to kill her in such a brutal way? But no one thought it could have been Eric and Lyle who did this and stuck to their story, acting incredibly devastated by the loss of their parents and also. Very scared, they began living in hotels immediately, claiming that they were afraid that whoever did this to their parents would come back and kill them.

They ended up getting bodyguards and started wearing bulletproof vests, but they also started taking advantage of the money right away. They began spending their parents' wealth immediately on August 24, literally the day before their parents' funeral. Lyle ended up buying three Rolex watches. They showed up to the funeral all dressed in new shoes and they arrived late and the boys behaved very strangely. People noticed this, especially Lyle, who began making casual jokes about his father about filling his shoes because he had new shoes. He was casually talking to another friend about how they could get tickets to the US Open and people thought that was strange and it was a big funeral there were like 200 people there, but very few of these people were actually his friends.

José and Kitty didn't really have that many friends, they didn't attend many social events orparties, so a lot of these people were just people. That worked on Joseph, probably people who didn't even like him, then they also had a second funeral a few days later and this time Lyle gave one of the eulogies and talked about how much he loved his father and how proud he was. He would miss him dearly, but they didn't seem so sad after the funeral, as if the spending spree would continue immediately. Lyle ended up buying Chuck's Spring Street Café restaurant in Princeton for 550,000.

He also bought that Porsche he always wanted, which was sixty thousand dollars, ended up changing the name of his restaurant to Mr Buffalo's and liked the new business life. He even decided to start a new company called Menendez Investment Companies. He hired some friends from Princeton that he knew and also planned to franchise. at the restaurant, so he was making a lot of moves in the business world, eric was also spending a lot of money, not as much as lyle, but a lot, he bought a new jeep wrangler and also started paying for private tennis training and This tennis coach earned like 50,000 a year, so it was a pretty big business and they decided to continue living in the house.

They simply rented some new furniture to replace the blood-soaked furniture in the living room. At one point they thought they might move. It was learned that they were going to make a deposit for a 900,000 penthouse but they decided not to do so. Instead, they rented two adjoining condos in Marina del Rey and threw a bunch of parties there and throughout all of this the mansion stayed empty, you know? It was a reminder to them that they didn't want to go there anymore, it scared them, it reminded them of what they did and at this point the only two who knew who really killed Joseph and Kitty were Lyle and Eric, they continued spending money.

I think it was also a way to distract themselves from the stress they felt for having committed a murder. They bought very expensive wardrobes. Eric finally bought a Rolex. Those three Rolexes that Lyle bought were just for him, so Eric had only himself. Eric also got into a lot. in the game And he ended up losing a lot of money that way and he ended up changing his original plan which was to go to the University of California to play tennis and he decided to go do these competitions in the Middle East and he did that for a while. hoping to become a professional in tennis, that's how much he loved it, we hired an Olympic weight training coach for them, we did a complete nutritional profile, they measured their oxygen consumption volume, their flexibility, obviously, strength, all these things were measured.

They acted like everything was normal, like they just hadn't murdered their parents recently, they were driving Kitty's Mercedes-Benz like everything was fine, and as time went on, they continued to spend more and more, six months after His parents. were murdered had spent over seven hundred thousand dollars which is equivalent to about 1.5 million dollars in today's money they just started spending money and that didn't seem like the way to mourn the loss of your parents was to start spending your money. and they were going to inherit a lot of money, joseph was worth around 14 million dollars, plus they were going to receive the 5 million dollars from that second life insurance policy and eric and lyle were going to inherit all of this and probably would.

They have spent more than they did in those first six months, but they didn't have access to everything, it still had to be resolved through José's estate and you are probably wondering why no one suspected them. You know, it seems a little strange. With how much they are spending and prospering after their parents were just murdered and you'd be right, the detectives were starting to realize, they were starting to realize that the two of them had a huge financial motive for committing this crime, plus they the more time they spent with the children. They seemed less and less interested in the investigation.

They never called to see if they were any closer to finding out who killed their parents. They didn't seem worried about it at all. They certainly weren't acting like they normally would. If your parents had just been murdered then they looked a little closer at the kids and that's when they realized they had bought guns on August 18th so two days before their parents were killed they used a stolen ID to buy the weapons and then they brought them. They took them home and later discovered that the children had also hired a computer expert to completely wipe their family's hard drive.

This was also important because they believe that José had the most up-to-date versions of his will on his computer, so the police ended up talking to Eric's friend. Craig, who he played tennis with and they were working together on writing that script as well, so they asked him to go to lunch with Eric and he did. It was November 17th. He asked her to go to lunch and they liked it. normal but eric seemed very nervous very anxious craig kept poking at him do you know what's going on why are you acting weird and finally eric just confessed everything to craig he really trusted craig and told him how lyle's plan was to shoot dad and how he was tasked with shooting his mother, he explained that he couldn't do it, that he didn't dare shoot his mother, so Lyle shot his mother too, but they didn't have a recording device for this lunch, so he He asked Craig to go to Eric again and get the confession out of him again, this time using the recording device that had a wire on it and then he also had a calculator with a recording device in it that he held under the table and Craig asked him. again about how he killed his parents but this time he denied it, he said they didn't do it, he explained that he should never have told Craig that and that it was made up and that he and Lyle never killed anyone so they started talking .

Family Therapist Kitty was also in therapy and it turns out that Kitty actually told her therapist that she was afraid of her children and that she thought they were sociopaths. It turns out that she was so afraid of them that she locked herself in her room. At night and after the murder occurred, Eric continued to see his therapist Dr. Ozil and, according to Dr. Ozil, at this time the stress and anxiety were really taking their toll on Eric. In fact, he was getting ulcers from all the stress, I can't imagine. and they had these really informal therapy sessions.

Dr. Ozil thought he could really get to him. I think he was sensing that they might have been involved during one of his sessions. They ended up just walking in a park. They had a very informal talk. and then they went back to dr ozil's office and when they got there, eric just leans on a parking meter and casually says "we did it." Dr ozil was shocked and took him to his office and asked him to explain the whole story. where Eric explained that after murdering his parents they put on clean clothes, threw their shotguns in the street and went to the movie theater to get a ticket as an alibi for the night.

Dr. Ozil told him to call Lyle and tell him to meet him at the office, Lyle had no idea that Eric had just confessed everything so he came and met him there and was going to talk to them. , train them and be there for them, but he was secretly going to record the session and decided. that she was going to have her lover at that moment standing outside the door and listening in case anything went crazy while they were talking and that she was ready to call the police at any moment and when lyle found out that eric had spelled the beans dr ozil was angry this was not part of the plan they were supposed to get their way and he actually ended up threatening to kill dr ozil if he told anyone and instead of going to the police immediately he continued to see the

brothers

, continued to have several sessions with them, recorded everything and they began to talk about the murders in more detail.

Dr. Ozil was just holding on to all this information until the day his lover, his name is Judahlon, went to see the police and gave them the information and she said she did this because Dr. Ozil was abusing her and wanted get revenge on him, so the police discovered that he had confession tapes of the children and that they were the ones. who murdered his parents so they got a subpoena for the tapes, they went and confiscated them from a safe deposit box he had at a bank on Venture Boulevard and immediately learned that Lyle might flee the state because of this which he was terrified of. get.

They caught him, so they decided they couldn't waste any time. Lyle clearly knew the matter was over, so on March 8, 1990, more than a dozen police officers stopped him as he pulled out of his driveway and made him exit the vehicle. On the ground face down, they handcuffed him and took him to the police station. It was over and Eric at that time was at a tennis tournament in Israel. We got a call at six in the morning from Lyle's lawyer saying you had to get on a ll. He flew immediately and got home and according to the people who were around him when he got the call he was crying hysterically he ended up flying to Miami where several of his relatives lived and then his aunt convinced him to fly back to Los Angeles and just turn himself in.

He surrendered leisurely on March 11, 1990. And they wasted no time, charges were filed against the boys the next day, but it was strange during the arraignment, the boys didn't seem all that concerned, they walked into the courtroom of beverly hills in smart suits and they were smiling they seemed sure that they are eric galen menéndez do you understand the charges against you? I understand both, for his honor. Thank you, Mr. Joseph Lyle Menéndez. Do you understand the charges against you? Yes, and when people discovered that the Menendez brothers had been accused. With killing their parents, their friends and family couldn't believe it, some of their relatives still supported them, even though they sat in the front row at the trial, their tennis coach sat in the front row and Eric's girlfriend, Even his grandmother sat in the front row, José's mother. and she always believed the boys were innocent at their arraignment, the judge explained to them that they were both accused of killing their parents for financial gain and that they could face the death penalty and asked them how they would plead and they both They said he is not guilty, so the defense and prosecution spent a lot of time arguing about whether the tapes that Dr.

Ozil had recorded may or may not be admissible in court, whether they were fair game because they were murderers or whether it fell under doctor-patient confidentiality. The California Supreme Court actually made the decision that two of the three tapes could be used in court. and one of these tapes had Lyle's confession, they determined that because Lyle had threatened Dr Ozil's life, he loses his right to doctor and patient confidentiality and going into the trial they knew that now that those tapes were going to be easy prey they couldn't pretend that the boys hadn't committed this crime they were going to have to have a different strategy, so in July of '93 it was announced for The first time Eric and Lyle actually killed their parents in self-defense after from a lifetime of psychological, physical and sexual abuse at the hands of their father and that their mother was also killed because she allowed it to happen, we have evidence to show that they were feeling fear of being in imminent danger of death or great bodily injury at the hands of their parents and when this came to light the media went crazy, there were so many opinions that many people felt bad for the children and believed them.

People thought it was purely a defense strategy, so the trial started 10 days later, on July 20, 1993, and they tried them both separately, so you know, they had two different defense teams, two different juries. and normally they would do it at different times, but they decided they did their trials at the same time and this was widely covered people couldn't get enough of this trial it really became a drama a sensation and there were definitely people who believed they were innocent and people who They believed they were guilty. Craig, Eric's friend, ended up talking to the media a lot, did all the interviews he could, and had co-written that friend's script with Eric, where the main character kills his parents for money, from what it seemed like. that they planned the murder and the media portrayed Lyle as the older one. more dominant brother, that convinced Eric to follow their plan and in fact they made the decision to broadcast the entire trial live on television for people to see, so it became a reality television show that almost the day of The inauguration attracted a dizzying array of spectators who descended. at the van nuys courthouse the girls were lining up at four in the morning and acting like lyle and eric were rock stars it was the most popular entrance in town there were only 10 seats for the press inside it was tense and electric while we waited for the brothers to appear and their grandmother María Menéndez continued to support the children throughout the trial and she did not even think that the children really killed their parents, she still believed in the theory that someoneof the mob did when eric and lyle walked into the courtroom for their first day of trial they didn't look like they did at the arraignment hearing their smiles were gone and they looked exhausted tired exhausted and they lost weight They were very pale they looked very depressed during the process they just sat there, staring straight ahead, according to the people who were there and had a very bad time in jail, other prisoners apparently hated them and they had to pay for protection in jail, So they clearly expected to be declared innocent, as the prosecution argued. that Eric and Lyle killed their parents for financial gain and that they should get the death penalty and they were sitting there watching TV, I don't know, you don't know what they were doing, I didn't go into the studio.

His brother came into the study, yes, and the television was on. I guess I heard the TV on. I don't remember and they were watching television. I don't know, do you want to tell me after all these years, sir, that his brother never told him? What were your parents doing when he walked from the kitchen into the family room? Are you asking me what I know now or what I knew then and the defense sought to prove that they were abused, that they were in danger and that they had to kill their children? their parents or else their parents could have killed them Eric's defense attorney was Leslie Ambronson, a well known death penalty advocate who had handled high profile criminal cases, she was like the best person money could Buy, she was known for being very tough and something of a force to be reckoned with in the courtroom, she would tear people down to tears on the witness stand.

Now many people think that Leslie purposely dressed the boys in a specific way to make them look younger instead of suits, they wore colorful sweaters. sweaters, she argued that even though the children seemed to have a perfect life on the outside, in reality their lives at home were absolute hell, she argued that they were traumatized by all the abuse, including sexual abuse, they had received from her father and the The sexual abuse they say they suffered is horrible, they described it in court, it's very graphic, very shocking, and she explained that José abused the children and Kitty just watched and allowed it to happen and never defended them, she said that José was a cruel perfectionist whose image was everything to him and who didn't really care much about his children, she argued that he would be the type who would rather kill his children than have the truth about his family came to light. and she explained that Kitty also lived in hell, apparently she was an alcoholic, she was a drug addict and she was very depressed because her husband had all these affairs that she knew about, they said she was very upset.

Distraught because she was a danger to herself, she was a dangerous driver, she was a terrible housekeeper, she was practically a bad mother and a suicidal disaster, all behind closed doors, she explained that her life was totally out of control, it was nothing like that. what it seemed like according to her. It was even messy in the house when they were growing up, there was often feces around their pet ferret's house, they also had a dog and apparently the dog went to the bathroom on the carpet so it was messy everywhere and They also mentioned that Lyle he had a pet rabbit when he was little and one morning he woke up and his head was hit and she said that Joseph and Kitty did this together and Lyle was so traumatized by all of this that he wet the bed. until he was 14 and this is very disturbing, but they claim that they took the sheets off the bed after this and put them on the breakfast table in the morning and made him sit and look at them to embarrass him.

They also claimed that Kitty had blamed the boys for not being able to have a successful career in broadcasting, they even said that she had threatened to poison them at one point so they were afraid of her and then they made a really shocking claim and said that Kitty had been giving Eric gave her genital exams every year until she was 15 years old. And remember how I explained that Lyle was going bald and used to wear a toupee the week before she was murdered. Apparently she tore off his toupee in a fight and that's how Eric found out that his brother was bald he didn't even know it and his family was so full of secrets and this was kind of a breaking point for them.

The two began discussing how his family was toxic and Eric began telling Lyle everything his father had been doing. He for years and is very horrible and when Lyle found out what had been happening to his brother, he apparently threatened his father to stop and said if he didn't they would make it public, but José supposedly responded and said he's my son . do whatever you want with him and that's when they said that the kids knew they had to do something because they were afraid of their dad, they were afraid that maybe he would kill them to prevent the secret from coming out and they decided to have them both. the brothers testify at their trials and I think that was absolutely crucial because when you hear it from them it is very disturbing, whether you believe them or not, just the details that they talked about were so shocking and disturbing on so many levels that they gave very graphic descriptions of all the sexual abuse they had both suffered and how their father had raped them and used inanimate objects on them and they told all of this on the stand in front of everyone in court and many times they cried hysterically throughout their interviews your father had sexual contact with you Yes, and since it started, it just started after sports practice, he gave me massages, I just told him that I didn't want to do this and that it hurt and he said no, I didn't mean to hurt me, he loved me.

Did you tell your mom? Yes, she told me to stop doing it and that she was overreacting and that my dad has to punish me when I do things wrong. What did she tell you about telling people? He just said it was our secret that bad things would happen to me if I told anyone here one of your relatives testifying that he witnessed an incident where your father pulled you out of a family gathering, took you to your room and hit you. and it hit you in the stomach and you didn't cry, remember that, okay? During the course of your education, learning to control your emotions was very important.

Right, okay now, in addition to lying to the officers who arrived on the scene, you then went to the police department. for an interview with sergeant edmonds do you remember yes and when you saw sergeant edmonds you lied to him too right yes now at the time the police arrived at your parents' house shortly after a family friend or a friend of yours arrived and your brothers? and that was right for Mark Heffernan shortly after at the house, yeah, okay, and he accompanied you to the police department, that's right, or he left in a separate car, okay?

And you also lied to him in the sense that we didn't tell him? What happened? Yes, then again you presented him as a witness and not as a suspect in this crime. Right, have you ever tried to end sex through confrontation or violence against your father? Yes, you were violent with your father. No, not violence. no, but I said no once, you said no, once, yes, on that particular occasion, after you said no, your father got angry, yes, and did something violent, yes, they had taken care of you well all your life, and that's how it was when your father passed away.

Your mother said she was going to disown you, that worried you, right? They didn't take good care of me my entire life. I had every penny I ever wanted, though that's for sure, but the public had very little sympathy for guys, they didn't believe them at all, in fact, they were even made fun of on Saturday Night Live and the clip is pretty embarrassing. I don't understand how this was ever funny. Let me ask you one more time, is this his testimony? that you and your brother eric in fact had nothing to do with the murder of your parents, jose and kitty

menendez

, that is correct, so can you tell the court who murdered your parents, our other two brothers, danny

menendez

and José Menéndez Jr?, could you say their names? for the court file danny menendez jose menendez jr and you two are the children of jose and kitty menendez yes yes and no you are lyle and eric menendez pretending to be two different menendez brothers no, we are not and it is your testimony that it was you who killed your parents josé and kitty menéndez and not your brothers lyle and eric menéndez with whom you have a striking resemblance yes and that you forced your two innocent brothers lyle and eric menéndez to confess to the murder yes at one point during the trial they had their A cousin came and he testified that Lyle had actually confided in him as a child, when they were eight years old, that he was being sexually abused and one thing that he said in court that was quite strange and that really caught my attention is that he said that the boys I liked it. sleeping with her mother when her father was out of town, they would argue over who slept in her bed, which I mean, a lot of people do that, it's not that strange, but they did it until she was 15, which she noticed seemed like bit strange.

She, her friend Craig, who had been talking to the media a lot, had been told to stop talking to the media, had been banned from talking to the media, and was now going to testify in court and testified about how Eric had confessed. the murderers. 12 days after they happened and he also talked about the script they had written, that he almost premeditated the murder and that they didn't actually have the script as evidence in court, they just discussed it but the jury couldn't find out. Reading it, she said he came back outside and his brother was standing there with two shotguns and said, let's do it and they went in and Eric walked up to the door on the left that was slightly open and the door on the right was Lyle. he stood up and put his shoulder against the door on the right, eric said he looked in and saw his parents sitting on the couch and lyle opened the door and shot his father and he looked at eric and said shoot mom and Eric said he shot his mother as she was standing and screaming, they also had the computer expert who cleaned the computers come and testify and he talked about how disturbing it was to be in the house, the coroner showed very graphic images of the crime scene to the jury, which definitely made them very happy. emotional and the defense had tried very hard not to show these photos in court, they thought they were too graphic, but they went ahead anyway and they made a huge impact and one thing that kept being mentioned in the trial was this movie called club from billionaire guys this came out just three weeks before the murders occurred and dr.

Ozil claimed in court that Eric had mentioned on one of the tapes that was not used in court that this film inspired the crime because it was very similar to the way his parents were murdered, it was the story of a group of rich children in beverly hills that they killed their father for money and not only that the characters wore rolexes and drove a jeep wrangler, this movie was actually released by jose's live entertainment company, now they were. They couldn't show the film in court, but they could mention it and argue that they could have been inspired by it, so the whole trial was very long, if we went over every detail, we would be here all day, it lasted four and a half months but it finally came came to an end in January of '94 and the jury deliberated for about a month and this is really interesting, but they were actually split by gender, all the women on the jury wanted to acquit and all the men.

The jury wanted to convict, they couldn't reach a conclusion, so they decided to mistrial. Do you consider this at least a partial victory despite not knowing everything about the stalemate? I have very high standards for what a win is, so no There's no hung jury as the victor, no, it's not a loss, but it's not a win. I mean, you're still back at square one running in circles, so the county district attorney immediately announced that there would be a new trial for both boys. The second trial started in October 1995 and this time it was just a jury and this time it was different because they decided not to allow the media to participate.

Last time it had become a public circus, so they wanted to keep it a secret. This time the judge decided not to allow them to talk as much about the sexual abuse that the children had suffered, other than the arguments they presented were more or less the same, it was more or less the same trial repeated this time, although the defense really went away . After Dr. Ozil and they tried to discredit him as much as possible, they said that he was a liar and a cheat and just a bad guy in general and claimed that he planned to use these recordings as blackmail and that he would never go to the police. he was going to keep the secret and blackmail the boys maybe get some money out of them who knows so when he testified this time it lasted six days and this led to two of his lovers filing complaints against him and the state also recommended that he lose his license and the defense hoped this would distract the jury from Eric and Lyle and when Eric testified, it actually lasted several weeks, apparently calling his father a murderer, saying he was very afraid of him and thoughtthat would have killed him. someone, if he didn't kill him first during the interrogation, Eric was actually caught in a lie, he said that they had bought guns for protection three years before the murder, but it turned out that the story of the one who claimed to have bought them was not even open. at that point, so the prosecution was able to ask the jury, do you know if you could lie about that?

What else is he capable of lying about? If everything was invented. The main thing that was different in this trial was that Lyle did it. not testify, which was an interesting move, so this time the jury deliberated for almost three weeks and they ended up finding Eric and Lyle guilty of two counts of first degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder and before they were sentenced they decided that they wanted They told the public and they did an interview with Barbara Walters and this is a really famous interview. It's very interesting. Much of it is on YouTube.

I recommend seeing it. Do you think the media has portrayed you fairly? Can you say no? I know if anyone can be fairly portrayed in the media who they are, well let me say it, there are people, a large number of people who think that you two are spoiled brats, that you are evil, that you are monsters, what do you tell them? that is not so? who I am, but I can't defend that. I would be surprised if anyone who was present at the trial and saw the whole thing rather than snippets of the news felt that way, so the jury ended up deciding they weren't going to go forward. with the death penalty because Eric and Lyle had no history of violence but completely rejected the idea that this was done in self-defense in any way or that the children were abused.

The Menendez brothers were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. July 2, 1996 and this is one of the most controversial verdicts of all time, this is highly debated to this day and I would say that most people are on the side of the menendez brothers now, maybe not in the time when all of this was happening, but Like I said earlier in the video, I think people who look back on this see it with new eyes and think twice and as they were heading into the sentencing period, the brothers ended up requesting that at least put them in the same prison so they could be together, but that was denied, which was quite shocking.

Lyle and Eric were separated and sent to two separate prisons on September 10, 1996, they greeted each other from across the prison yard and that was the last time they saw each other for decades. which was very very hard for them, they are extremely close and were also considered maximum security prisoners so they were separated from all the other inmates and spent a lot of time alone. They attempted to appeal the result, but on February 27, the California Court of Appeals. who upheld their convictions in may 1998 attempted to have the supreme court review the case and they refused to do so.

They attempted several times to file habeas corpus petitions with the California supreme court but were denied several times. 2005 was the last time they were denied and they have been a bit of a stalemate since then, since then Eric and Lyle got married in prison in 1996, Lyle married Anna Erickson, but then in 2001 Anna ended up finding out that he had been dating her. cheating in prison and that he was writing to other women, so she divorced him. He then remarried in 2003 to a woman named Rebecca. Eric married a woman named Tammy in 1999 and had been writing to his pen pals for about six years before getting married in 2005.

She was interviewed by ABC News and said that His relationship was something he had dreamed of for a long time. In 2005, she even published a book called They Said We'd Never Do It in My Life with Eric Menendez. In 2017, they did an interview with People magazine and explained that even though they were separated. In the prisons they remained very close even though they could not see or talk to each other, they even communicated through their wives, they sent letters back and forth, they even played chess through their wives through letters, but they finally managed to see each other again. in february 2018 when lyle was transferred to the same prison his brother was in and when they were finally able to see each other in person it had been 22 years and the people who were there said they just hugged each other in silence for minutes and they were both just crying hysterically and After that they were allowed to have a few hours alone together.

They were initially housed in separate areas in the jail, but were eventually moved to the same unit, so they are now able to spend time together every day. day they can eat together and walk, exercise together outside and many members of their family still support them to this day and are very happy that at least now they are together, some family members have even talked about it. They are absolutely certain that Eric and Lyle really suffered years of horrible abuse at the hands of their father and that their mother allowed it to happen and that is what makes this case so controversial: some people think that this is a defense invented by two rich The children who became greedy and killed their parents and many others see it in the complete opposite way: these were two very abused children who were terrified and felt they had no choice but to kill their parents in self-defense, so That brings me to the question of the day: what do you think happened?

Do you think the Menendez brothers are guilty or not guilty and why let me know in the comments below? I love hearing your comments on these cases which were definitely long so I'm going to end here but I hope you enjoyed this video be sure to let me know any other cases you want to see by checking out my case submission form in the description box . Also if you want to see more from me, you can check out my two podcasts, both are available on YouTube to watch. I'll link them below. Also, if you could like this video, it really helps me.

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