You're listening to Amma Mia podcast. Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waterers. This podcast was recorded on it's August nineteen eighty nine, and a nine to one to one call comes through from a Beverly Hills mansion on ELM Drive just before midnight. The caller is twenty one year old Lyle Menendez and he's hysterical. You can hear his eighteen year old brother Eric in the background also crying.
When he shot right start he shot.
What happened? The brother's parents, Jose and Kitty, are dead, shot a combined sixteen times at close range while in their TV room. The crime scene is horrific. The bodies are severely maimed and there's blood everywhere. Detectives quickly notice there's no shells. Whoever shot them has picked them all up before fleeing. At first, they suspect a mafia or mob hit, but seven months later it's the brothers who are arrested for murder in a case that catapults them
into worldwide infamy. Even thirty five years later, we're still talking about the Menendez brothers, their two high profile trials, and why they killed their parents. I'm Jemma Bass and this is True Crime Conversations, a Mum of Meer podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the people who know the most about them. It took years for the brothers to start telling their side of the story, the true reason that led them to murder, the depraved family,
sea secrets that haunted them their entire lives. This is a case that has divided public opinion since the moment they were arrested, and has regained fresh notoriety in twenty twenty four as a new wave of supporters demand their release from prison, and Netflix release is not one but two new deep dives into their story, a drama called Monsters and a documentary called The Menendez Brothers. Eric now fifty three and Lyle now fifty six, have been in
prison for almost thirty five years. Robert Rand is an Emmy Award winning journalist who began covering the Menendez brothers case for the Miami Herald the day after the murders on August twenty one, nineteen eighty nine. He's been covering the case ever since and has a personal relationship with the brothers, speaking to them regularly. Days after our interview,
an announcement Robert had been expecting was confirmed. The La County District Attorney has wrecked amended the brothers for re sentencing, and as he explains in our chat, that's just the first of a number of hurdles they face if they'd ever walk free from prison. Robert joins us. Now, Robert from the outside. Who were the Menendez family living on Elm Drive in Beverly Hills in the eighties.
Well, the family of Jose and kideven Ands and their two sons, Eric Lyle were the American dream. JOSEM. Nunders was a entertainment exective making two million dollars a year Erica lyman Ands were nationally recked Tess players. Kitty was very involved in charity work on the outside looking in, This was who people dreamed of becoming in America. Behind the walls of that mansion, this was a highly dysfunctional family that were speating widely out of control.
Let's hear a little bit more about Jose and Kitty and that kind of origin story. Obviously that were very rich. Where did all that wealth come film? How did their story stop?
Actually, Jose and Kidding Menanda's were dirt poor when they met. Before Jose immigrated to the States, he was a country culbal lifestyle in Nevana, and overnight he was living in the attic of the home of distant relatives in northeastern Pennsylvania, and suddenly he had no money. So it was a very radical change for him to come in the States. His sister, march Cano told me when I met her ten days after the killings, and Jose wanted to run
for the US Senate from Florida. He wanted to aus Castro from Cuba, the man who had taken away his country club lifestyle. The first day I met Jose's sister of marce Keno, we didn't talk at all about the American investigation. There were some months between the crime and the rest of Eric and Lyle Menendez, and so she spent four hours telling me the family history, which was extremely interesting, of how they started in Spain. They were dirt bored, they became very wealthy, and then they lost
everything when Franco came into power. They immigrated to Cuba. In a period of years, they became very wealthy, and then they lost everything once again when Castro came into power. And then the family came to the States and they started, like many Kiven immigrants, with nothing, and they were tired. They became wealthy all over again. So the family story is really kind of interesting.
How about Lyle and Eric, the obviously come from these two at the time very wealthy parents or wealthy family, the very attractive young men. What was their reputation before all of this happened.
Well, I spent three days interviewing Eric and Lymnandez two months after the killing of their parents, five months before. They were a rustled and they weren't suspects publicly, and I had no reason to be suspicions of them, And they told me for several days, very loving, caring, emotional
stories about how much they missed their parents. I had met them because of Jose's sister, march Cano, who lived in westbamb Beach, Florida, And I was writing for the Sunday magazine of the Miami Hera, and my assignment in the fall of eighty nine was not to write about the murder investigation, but to do a biography aboutse Menendez. Rag Serusia's story ends in a terrible.
Tragedy In nineteen eighty eight. So about a year before the killings, the brothers were caught up in a series of burglaries. Can you talk us through that? What were they doing? Why were they stealing? They obviously came from a rich family.
The birtlaries in Calabasas, which is also known as the home of the Kardashian family. Were Eric and Lyle doing burtlaries with close friends of theirs from Calabasas hide the victims were actually the parents some of the kids doing the burglaries, so that is how they just happened to know the combinations to safes. The fact that Eric de Lyle were involved in this group of wealthy kids who were known to be spoiled is part of who they were.
They got involved in these burglaries and everything was settled.
Jose Menendez hired one of the best criminal defense attourneys in La Basically, Eric Menandez took the fall for both brothers and was cut up as a juvenile in the juvenile court system, and so he was basically released with a slap on the risk and Jose promised that both brothers would seek counseling with doctor Jerome Mosil, who was a therapist that kiddyman and just knew about and that therapy initially included all four of them and his family members.
And then Jose wan to make sure that they didn't reveal anything negative about the family, and so Jose had the therapists actually write a letter giving permission for the therapists to tell him everything that went on from therapy sessions. So Eric and Lyle were both asked to sign these waivers, and so there was no way that they were going to tell any of the secrets of the family.
That is such a violation, isn't it doesn't that go against the whole idea of therapy.
Of course, it's a horrible violation of therapy. The therapist, doctor Jeromo o'zel, was a star of prosecution witness in the first trial. The brothers were not going to say anything to him beyond the superficial account of the family and the burglaries, because they knew everything they said would be repeated to their father. And normally you have a privilege with a therapist thought point of therapy and see you are in a safe place and can go to
a therapist and tell him your deepest seekers. But they knew they could.
Let's talk about the crime itself. So it was August twenty, nineteen eighty nine. The brothers were eighteen and twenty one, and Lyle called nine one one really upset and reported his parents had been shot. What did police make of the crime scene, Because one of the parts that is dissected a lot is how gruesome the injuries were and how attacking the parents' faces they were.
Well, shotguns are a terrible weapon to kill people with. I mean they do tremendous damage to a human body. So the crime scene was gruesome. I've seen all the auto se phoos. They're gruesome. There's a Beverly Hills police videotape of the crime scene that's horrible to watch. And it was just a terrible crime scene. But all the social media speculation was that this was some kind of mafia hit. I just spent two months working on Sorry
for the Miami Hero about the home video business. So I was extremely well connected and called many of my sources and they all said to me, people do a lot of things in Hollywood to get even they usually don't kill each other. And so my sources immediately said, this has absolutely nothing to do with the home video business. But the LA Times, the Wall Street Journal were all running fun Paige stories saying this was a mafia hit
connected to the home video business. The La Times even had a mafia expert law enforcement officer do a couple of quotes and say, these murders think of organized crime. So that was what the public was sold. And really, after about a week the story disappeared from the national media.
We told us earlier that you did speak to the brothers before their arrest, before they were suspects, and you didn't have any suspicions. But looking back and reading your recollections of that time in your book, they were quite cagy with you. They kept canceling interviews and they didn't really want to talk about the details. Do you pick up on that stuff now when you think back.
Well, I certainly was well aware that they were canceling interviews on me. Canceled three times, and I had been on LA for two weeks, and my editor probably you need to come back on Monday, regardless of whether you speak to their brothers. And so I called their aunt Marx Canado and Flora and said, I really would like to interview the brothers, but they've canceled on me. Three times, can you please call them and tell them it's important
that we talk. And so she called them and told them, you have to talk to Robert brand.
One thing that did make media coverage at the time was how the brothers were behaving after the murder. Can you talk us through that? They kind of went on a shopping spree. They did a few other things that kind of raised eyebrows.
A couple of things I'd like to say that are very important. The first is that the Menends brothers grew up in a very wealthy, upper class family, so their entire lives they had been used to spending a lot of money. And so five weeks after the killings, Marxkiano went to Beverly Hills, met the brothers and handed them each check for a quarter million dollars and they were the beneficiaries of an insurance fallacy. They never got one
penny of the statement. Lyle did receive a three hundred thousand dollars loan from the estate to buy a chickening restaurant in Princeton, which he hoped to franchise, But the only money they had to spend was this life insurance fallacy that they didn't even know that Jose had bought
from his sister, who was a financial planner. And so my theory is, if you had any kid who's eighteen or twenty one a quarter million dollars in cash, to me, this surprise would be if they didn't go out and buy a new car, or buy nice clothes, or by a stereo system. Things were very different in the media in the early nineties. There was no social media, there was no internet. So once the mainstream media had set an agenda in a high profile case, that was it.
It was very difficult for a defendant to fight back. And so the defense made what I believe was a tactical here, and they chose not to reveal anything about their case until two weeks before the first trial in July of ninety three. And so the reaction of the general public was, well, gee, we've only been hearing this one story for three years. Really, rich kids kill a lovely couple their parents, and why are we sharing this defense theory for the first time? And as I said,
that was a deliberate decision by the defense. Hindsight, I believe was an error, but it really shocked the public. And when the defense attorneys LESSI Emes and Joe Lanson gave their opening statements. They told the detailed story of how the brothers had grown up in a highly destructional family, and that they'd been both sexually molested starting when they were six years old.
Up next, I asked Robert about who the Menendez brothers confided in about their parents' murder, including a therapist who got their confessions on tape. How did the brother's guilt start to kind of become evident? Was it was mainly Eric, the younger brother, that started to crack a bit, Wasn't that?
What happened actually was that the Beverly Hills Police received a phone call from lawyer representing the mother of one of their friends, and that lawyer told the police you really should focus on Eric and Lyle. They may have been responsible for the killing of their parents. And that was the first major clue to the Beverly Hills police that was obviously never made public for a long time
until after that they were arrested. It's never been that well known, but somebody tipped off the Beverly Hill police and advised them to look very closely at the brothers.
Did Eric tell anyone about what happened.
Yes, according to the testimony of his best friend Prexy and MORRELLI actually confessed him or basically said, do you want to know what happened? About a week after the killings, and Eric kind of walked Craig through generally what happened
that night. And in November and the Beverly Hos police had Craig agreed to wear a wire and they had dinner with Eric, and obviously they were hoping that on this wire they would get a confession from Dusty, but he never confessed during that dinner, and that tape was basically worthless.
I went to doctor Roziald because I really wanted to kill myself. I told him I was responsible. His response was to.
Have a loud He wanted one tape in which, at some point on tape and he told us, do you guys say you killed your parents? It wasn't like he was like, oh, this is terrible, let me help you guys. And then we worked through this in a confidential way. That's what a normal therapist would do. Doctor ziel is right into blackmail.
How does the therapist come into this? Did Eric stop telling him as well?
Yes, So, contrary to the bus series. The Menentos brothers were not party animals when I met them in late October of nineteen eighty nine. They were conservad somewhat shy self spoken. Both brothers were known to be very conservative athletic jocks who were nationally ranked tennis players. And what happened with Eric was that in September eighty nine, following four or five weeks after the killings, he moved in and stayed with a cousin in the San Ferdeto Valley
suburb of la Basically, Eric was falling apart. He was not partying like they showed in the Monsters series on Netflix. Eric was suicidal. He was crying all day every day, and finally, after about five weeks, his cousin recommended that he go see doctor jo Oziel, who he knew from the calvastis Burglaris therapy and so Eric called doctor Orzel and made an appointment for Halloween on nineteen eighty nine, and Eric told the doctor that he wanted to be
the lost appointment of the day. He didn't want to see anybody else in the office, and so he went to doctor Roziel as Lyle was passing out Halloween candy at the menendous mansion in Beverly Hills with his girlfriend, and so Eric and doctor Zil went out for a walk. At the end of that walk, Eric lean back or get some parking meter and said, we did it. And doctor Ziel said, you mean you killed your parents and
Eric said yes. So doctor Rozil immediately wanted to call Lyle and to have him come over to the office, which he did, and Lyle obviously was very angry at Eric or confessing, and Le really was terribly upset, you know. He said to Eric, why didn't you just talk to me? Why did you come to the therapist? Now he knows and that could be a problem. And so both brothers
left doctor Ziel's office after about an hour. But in a series of subsequent therapy sessions, doctor Roziel assured the brothers that everything they said to him was privilege and that he would not ever say anything to the police because of that privilege. But there's a side story that went on at this time, which was in doctor Roziel's parsonal life. Jerry O'sdiel was married to another therapist, but he had a girlfriend on the side named Judelon Smith.
Judelan Smith initially claimed she was in doctor Raziel's waiting room and actually overheard the brothers confessed. I believe that story is totally a true and that doctor Sells simply guss with his girlfriend and total information that he never should revealed as a therapist with any integrity?
Is that true in a therapy sense? If someone admits to a crime, especially murder, in your presence, are you still not allowed to go to police? Is that all supposed to be confidential?
No, So, even if you confess to a murder, that is self privileged. However, California has a law called the Tarsoft Law which spells up the exceptions to the privilege. And for example, if I go to a therapist tomorrow and say I'm going to kill my girlfriend tomorrow, the therapist is obligated to contact law enforcement.
A therapist would have to disclose the police if the killing was about to happen, But if the killing has already happened, then that's a different story. You're right, right, So he doesn't have to tell anyone. He's actually under oath not to tell anyone.
That is the privilege law in California. But there's another exception. Under the tearsoft rule, and that is, if you threaten your therapist, if you say I'm going to kill you, I'm going to hurgh you, I'm going after your family, the therapist is obligated to go to the police. And so when Eric Menandez for leaving is off after one hour, well Menandas shook Doc Rozel's hand and he said good luck to Roziel. And according to Ozield, that was the threat.
You perceived that as a threat. That's how that information was allowed in the trial. But there's one other thing you should know about doctor Roziel. The defense claimed in the first trial that o'zeal was blackmailing brothers because he told them both, you both need therapy days a week, and I'm going to be billing your family back East for two therapy sessions a day, one for each of you.
And so the bills kept getting larger and larger, and finally March Cando, Jose's sister in westwan Beach called the brothers and said, do you really need ten thousand dollars worth of therapy every week? And they told her they insisted that the bills we paid and therapy was helping them so much and in reality, Eric and Lyle Menendez never showed up for a single appointment on the books.
Was it all of this stuff with Ozial that eventually led to their arrest?
Yes. The way that Lyle and Eric Menande's were arrested was that Judelan Smith was finally kicked out of the house by doctor Ziel and his wife and the next day she went to the Beverly Hill police and said, Eric lyleman Ands killed their parents and doctor Dreaz has some tapes in his safebox, including one tape with Erica Lyles's confession that was recorded in December eighty nine, a
couple months after Eric Hurst contested Doctor Razel. So the morning after Judelan Smith went to the Beverly Hills place, the investigators conducted a search hoarm on doctor Rozel's house. The entire team of police went to the Ouzel's house and also there was what's called a special Master and his job in a situation that involves possibly privileged material is to hold onto the tapes and don't let anybody hear the tapes because they would become a source of litigation.
In the days after the brothers were rushing doctor Rozil. After they got the tapes from his safe found box, he insisted that the police listened to the tapes immediately. And doctor Zil is very upset and he said, there are more people that are going to die tonight and in the next few days if you don't hear these
tapes right now. And so the police were more than happy to listen to the tapes in spite of what the law said was this Special Master was a lawyer, was supposed to seize the tapes keep them in his possession, and so there would likely be litigation later. They listened to the tapes in doctor Ziel's living room than the afternoon on the search and a few hours later MENANDUS arrested. Eric was in Israel in a test tournament and he actually made it out of Israel to London before Interpol
came knocking on his door in Israel. So Eric was actually in London known to interpoal for several days with his test coach, Mark Vernan. The family hired Robert Spiro, a lawyer that from the O. J. Simpson case, and Robert Spiro made a horrible mistake. He had Eric come back and surrender in Los Angeles. Eric flew from London to Miami. He met his aunt Markcano and her son Andy Cano, who became well known for his testimony in the first trial and also because of some of the
new evidence. Is a letter Eric Menendez wrote to Andy Cano in late nineteen eighty eight complaining about the ongoing sexual abuse by his father. If Eric Menandez had simply walked into a police station, any police station in London and surrendered, it would have been a condition of his extradition that he not be eligible for the death family because the UK does not have the deathly and so by having Eric returned to Los Angeles and director, he made him eligible for the death Oh my gosh, and
so that's insane. When the family found out about all this, they fired Robert Shapiro two or three weeks after he was hired, and they hired Leslie Eberson, which was a great move by them because watching her in court was like watching great theater. She is such an effective advocate.
She represented Rickman and the younger brother, and attorney named Jill Lansing represented Lyeleman and Hiss, and both of the defense attorneys were equally effective and very powerful in court, but Leslie Eberson got the majority of Polissy simply because she was so colorful, and there would be a news conference daily during the trial in which the prosecution would talk for fifteen minutes and then the deftt Jurneys would
talk for fifteen minutes. But Joe Lansing was equal to Lessie Aberson in the power she had and how effective she was.
Leslie was just more charismatic.
I guess me and love Leslie, and Leslie was very powerful in her TV appearances.
Robert, what was the reaction like from the public when the brothers were arrested and how did you feel about it you interviewed them, How did you feel when they were arrested and charged with murder.
By the time they were arrested, I knew that they were the soul and the only suspects. I kept in close such with their aunt march Caano. She knew they were the primary suspects, but she told me that there's no way Erica Lyle had any do with killing of the parents. I had continued speaking to my sources in the home video business and they maintained the same thing they told me. In August nineteen eighty nine, the killings that they thought had no connection to hel media business.
And so I really was certain about two or three weeks before the arrest that their brothers were about to be arrested. And on the day that while I was rust, I was actually in westbom Beach having lunch with their aunt, Marx Canada, and we talked almost the entire lunch about how the brothers were the primary and only suspects, but missus Canner told me there was no possible way they
were involved in this crime. And so I left her office at the Smith party, and I stopped by my mother's house in Palm Beach to nineteen nineties technology pick up my phone messages, and there was a frantic message from the Miami Herald that said Lamanas had just been arrested in Beverly Hills, Rickman and were somewhere in Europe
and Interpowal with search for him. And so I was only three blocks away from March Canter office, and so I went back there and she saw me come off the elevator and her face dropped and she was very, very emotional, and before I said a word, she knew what had happened.
How did the brothers end up disclosing about their family secrets to their lawyers because it was quite a fair way into their prisons day after their arrest, wasn't it.
It was about six or eight months after the rest, and the brother's attitude was they never wanted to reveal any of the family students. Once the lead defense therapy, a sarchitecture of Bill Vickery, had interviewed them and gotten information out of them, they confessed to their family members, which had always supported them, and the defense journeys told the brothers, I'm sorry, but you are facing the death only and if you don't tell the whole story to
the juries. There were two jerrys in the first trial, one for each brother because some evidence only applied to one or the other. But the defense atturneys told the brothers, you are facing the deathitely. You may end up getting the death only unless you are willing to testify about what really happened in your family. And so that was a pretty strong set up for the brothers and they were unwilling, but they did testify in detail. It was excruciating. I was in the court roomind one of the twelve
reserve of seats. There were two hundred other recorders that watched a video feed at the trial, and it is a totally different experience to actually be in the courtroom twenty feet away from the witness and as opposed to watching a video feed. That's the experience I had.
Robert. Can you tell us about what happened to the brothers and how early this started, because this is something that had underpinned well Eric's entire life.
Really, Lyele Menandus was six year old when his father started telling them stories. They would sit around and go in a bedroom with the doory life and Jose Menendez told Lyle that Greek and Roman soldiers used to have sex with each other before battles to make them strong. And so Jose began to initially give Lyle massages, and then the massages turned sexual, and as you can imagine, it was very confusing her six year old, who has no point of reference for what was going on. Lyle
loved his father, He looked up to him. He thought so much of him, you know, he went along with it. So Lyle was molested by Jose for about two and a half years, between six and eight and a half years old.
Why do you want to make him happy, so he would love me.
And between the ages of six and eight, did your father have sexual contact with you?
Yes?
And how did it start.
We would have these talks and he would show me and he would fondle me, and he would ask me to do the same with him, and I would touch him and we would undress hey bright me.
And then the abusive Lyle stopped and the abuse of Eric began. And what's unusual about Eric story is that the abuse is still going on in August nineteen eighty nine, two weeks before the killings. That's just horrible. There was a serious confrontations in the days leading up to the killing of Jose and Kiddy Menendez, and for the first time since the brothers had been thirteen, they once had a brief discussion about the molization when Eric was thirteen
and Viio was sixteen. Lyle thought that all the abuse had stopped because that's what Jose told him, and the same thing happened to Eric. Eric loved the attention by his father because he loved his father, and Jose started with the stories of freaking Roman soldiers bonding before battle, and he initially started getting Eric presages, and then the massages turned sexual and once again, Eric was very confused because he was six seven years old, but he knew
he did like all the attention from his father. But there are hundreds of eyewitnesses to fiscal, rugal and emotional abuse that went on in the mine his family by Jose to his sons and so, as I said, it was very confusing for the brothers what was having. On the second hand, when the sexual abuse became more serious and Jose began raping the brothers, they asked him to police stop, you know, referring them. They didn't want to do this. And Jose actually had a very active sech
like he had a buffet of sexuality going on. And one of the therapists told me that it's quite common for child abusers to have an entire buffet of sexuality. Jose had a mistress in New York, he had a mistress in la He was using three different matters in Hollywood to supply him with prostitutes, and so in addition to the brothers, he had a lot of other things going on. Secially, one third of kids who were abused go on to become abusers themselves, which is.
A detail that comes to light in the trial that Lyle actually abused Eric in one instance.
Yes, but they were six and eight years old. So, in spite of Ryan Murphy or anybody connects it to a Netflix series speaks about it was certainly not adults having a sexual relationship. I know the story told the Monsters of Eric and Lyle having an ancessureus relationship is totally false and I can't understand where that came from.
How does Kitty come into all of this? Jose was the one that was abusing the boys.
Correct, did she know? Yes? In the series of confrontations in the days leading up to the killings of the parents, some of the confrontations were between Lyle and Kitty Menendez, and at one point Katy became so angry with him that she literally ripped off his two pay in front of Eric, and Eric didn't even know that war to pay, and Jose insisted that his seventeen year old son get a two pay because his hair was starting to thin, and Jose told him, you're going to prison, you will
meet important people that you will know for your entire life, so therefore you have to have a head of good hair. And as we think about it now, to force a seventeen year old to get it to pay is really horrible. I have an eighteen year old son. I can't imagine having that kind of relationship with him. Rootaino. One day, you know, you really need better hair, so let's go get you some.
That's a way to make you feel self conscious.
Right, And what Jose wanted was he wanted Lyle to be the new and improved version of Jose. Jose dreamed of going to an Ivy League college, but he went school at Queen's College, you know, smaller local community college in Queens. I mean it's still a very good school, but it's not the Ivy League. And so Lyle, who was a national reg test player, applied to person and
he got in because of his tennis skills. So by having Lyle go to an IVY League school, Jose was realizing his own dreams through Lyle.
Once the boys go to trial, what is the defense trying to prove? Because Lyle and Eric admit to killing their parents, but then they told his story about what they went through. Is that why they say they killed their parents.
Eric and Lyle Menendez had a series of conversations in the days leading up to the killing of their parents, and in these conversations, which became more heated each day, Lyle threatened to go to the relatives, go to the police, and reveal the molisation of Eric that was still ongoing
in August nineteen eighty nine. And in the final confrontation between the brothers and their parents Sunday evening August twentieth eighty nine, they said they wanted to go to the movies and leave the house, and the parents said they couldn't go out. And then Jose said a phrase to Eric which was a code word, and the phrase was go upstairs to your room and wait for me. And what that meant was that I'm going to come upstairs and molest you in a few minutes, So go upstairs
and wait for me. And so that was what freaked out the brothers, and they had purchased two shotguns on Friday afternoon. The defense theory of the case was called an imperfect self defense. The legal theory was not we were abused, so we killed our parents to pay them back. The actual legal theory was Eric, Letomanandez were in fear for their lives at the moment they shot their parents. And as I say that that is called an imperfect
self defense, and Judge Samley Weisberg with the crowd. Judge let the defense put on fifty three witnesses, teachers, coaches, family friends, relatives who all had bits and pieces of a puzzle. In the first trial, half the members of each jury, all the women, voted for manslaughter and wooden budget, and half the jurors, all the men, voted for murder.
And I interviewed off twenty four jurors at the first trial, and all the men told me some version of well, a father would never do that to his sons because it.
Was a different time, wasn't it.
It's not like today, and that's the way, sadly was thirty years ago. Today we have social media, we have the Internet. Dependents can fight back and try to get out their case much easier than you could back then.
Well, the boys' defense, you know what they'd been through, this horrible abuse, was kind of turned into a bit of a joke by the media of the time, not you, of course, but there was a sitcom kind of version of it, and they kind of called it the Sweater defense.
Like it.
It's quite hard to watch back.
It's so wild for me to watch those videos from the Saturday at Live, the comedy show It's very popular, did a couple of sketches in which they just mocked the brothers.
My father said Danny and Jose Junior didn't deserve to have any official records of their existence because they were weak and not good tennis players.
Jay Leno on the Tonight Show NBC in the States did a number of skits including you mentioned the Menendez sitcom. Jay Leno came on one night and say, we have an exclusive video of the new opening of the new Menanda sitcom which is going to appear on NBC. And it's horrible for me to look back now and see those videos that we were so insensitive as a society back then.
Because regardless of whether you know, and there are plenty of people out there that think the boys were lying about their story. And even if you did sit on that can to make fun of allegations like this in a public sphere in front of you know, hundreds of other potential victims that are watching, there was just so much wrong with that, right.
And one interesting factory is that every day in Laveman is the older brother test ride on the witness and he carried a letter in his pocket from a different abuse survivor that they had written him. And in fact, at the height of their popularity in the nineteen ninety three trial, the brothers were receiving a thousand letters a week wow, and half of them were from abuse serrivors and the other half were from groupies that thought, Wow, they could be acquitted and they'll be rich. So I
want to meet them. And so when I would go to the Ellen County jail to visit them on weekends, I would see strangers, you know, women lined up hoping, hoping to get in and miss them. They never did because they were on the visitor list that the brothers had drawn up. But I was aware of all the
groupies that were following the case. The courtroom where the trial was held was very small, and so at three point thirty in the morning, the groupies would form a line, and maybe ten of them a day would actually get in the.
Courtroom, gosh, like celebrities.
And there's one scene in Monsters that is actually true, and that is you see Lomanns walk out of a van from the trial back to the jail, and there's a woman holding a sign and John sigin saying, marry me, Lyle, and I really saw that it really happened.
Tell me about the trial that actually led to the boy's conviction, because it was very, very different to that original one that we're talking about that had all of the witnesses that allowed the boys to tell their story. How different was it?
The second trial was very different. And I don't blame the jury for reaching the verdict they did because they heard a completely different set of evidence than the jurors in the first trial. And the first thing the judge did was he kicked the tea camera out of the courtroom. The first show was broadcast Gable of Gabble, even the Evidence series on cor TV. The judge kicked the camera out of the court room because he knew that there was no video, that the media coverage would go way down.
And after he did that, he basically rehearsed almost all of his evidence rolling in the first trial. So Judge Weishborg would not allow all the family friends' coaches who knew the brothers well satisfied in the second trial. And Weisberg ruled that way because he said, you know, any evidence of their abuse is not rellant to this trial, which is totally the opposite instruction he gave at the
end of his trial. One other important thing, Lyelman Anders did not testify in the second trial for a variety of reasons, but the main one was that his journey Jill Lansing had resigned from the case and Lyle had developed such a close bottom with her that he really said, I can't go on or I can't test for dancing. Is my attorney?
Well, you'd have to build that whole relationship again with a new lawyer and tell them everything. And you can understand that is.
A very traumatic experience for any of youse survivor who actually come forward and tell their life experience.
After that second trial, the brothers were given life without parole. And obviously we've spoken about there was an option in that first trial for them to get to manslaughter to only be in prison for a few years, but they've been in prison for over three decades.
Now.
Do you believe that that was a fair sentence.
No, the correct verdict in this trial should have been manslaughter, not murder. If the brothers had been conducted at manslaughter, as half the jurors voted for in the first trial, they would have been sentenced to twenty two years in prison. They've now been incarcerated for almost thirty five years, so in other words, they would have been out of prison
after twenty two years. And the fact that they are still locked up, as I often say when people interview me, the streets of California are not safer tonight because Eric and Lyle and Unders are locked up. I believe if the brothers get out, they will never commit any new crimes. And they've dedicated their lives to be in service in their inmate community, and so it's remarkable what they're doing.
They're both teaching classes and they're cunseling in other inmates who are sexual abuse survivors, and as you can guess, there are many people inside the prison that were abused.
You're listening to true crime Conversations with me Jemma Bass. I'm speaking with journalists and author of the Menendez Murders book Robert rand after the break. Where are the Menendez brothers now and how do they feel about the Monster's Netflix series and all the new attention on the case. There's a lot of buzz going on right now. There's a Netflix documentary, another series on Netflix called Monsters that's
a fictionalized scripted show based on the real events. How are the brothers feeling about it all, particularly Monsters, which paints them in a really unfavorable light.
They do not have access to the internet in prison, so neither of them has actually seen this series. However, they speaks to their wives daily and their wives told them everything about the series, and of course you can send them articles, and there's been quite a bit of press,
you know, since Monsters came out last September nineteen. But Ryelman is extremely upset with the way he is portrayed in Monsters, And as I told you a few months ago, I don't believe the portrayal is accurate at all, because I think the Monsters has an incredible cast. The problem I have with the series is the script. They have written a script that is just so bizarre to me.
And Ryan Murphey actually had the nerve to say that he had based Monsters on the reporting of Downtown, the writer from Manny Fair, who was famous in the age and nineties. I actually became good friends with Nicktoon during the first row, even though we completely discreed about the case. We sat next to each other every day we had lunch in the cafeteria three or four days a week, and we did a weekly debate on cor TV and
cor TV. Besides the trial live all day at night, they had a three hour highlight show about the trial called Primetime Justice, and Nick Dunn and I were regular guests every Friday on that show and we would debate the case and he would be the pro prostitution cheerleader that he always was, and trial covered.
But I guess by only covering his kind of angle monsters, is only covering half the story, or like the kind of more negative side of the story.
I was involved in the development and production of an NBC series in the fall of twenty seventeen starting e Falco, made by Dick Wolf, and the series is called Long Order Crime The Murders, and ninety five percent of the information in that series was actually fascial. It was actually the closest thing I've ever seen to the entire truth being told in the scripted series.
Robert, Where do we sit today as we talk in terms of the brothers court proceedings they put through a petition in twenty twenty three, Can you take us through where we are? Are they hoping to get out? Is that looking like it could be a possibility.
In May of twenty twenty three, our documentary plus Maneu Moost release in twenty four hours after our documentary Career Hell of attorneys for lylent their fins while the Heavieast petition asking the courts to vacate their nineteen ninety six conviction based on new evidence that we revealed in the documentary, and the attorneys are trying for what may be their last hope to get them out from their life without parole Census and the very latest thing to happen this
month was that Los Angeles County DA George Gascone said, you know, I just want to let everybody know that I'm receiving a lot of inquiries from media and just from people in general, and I want everybody you know that we are carefully reviewing the new evidence. In fact, Da Gascone could have had that exact same news conference six months ago or a year ago, because he didn't
really say anything new. The brothers still have another hump they have to get over after Gascone makes his recommendation, and that is that they will then go in front of a Superior Court ooge whose last name is Ryan, and I am und sure that there will never be for.
Robert. Do you speak to the brothers and how are they feeling about the fact that all of this hype could end up with them being in the same position like that is one of the possibilities that they could remain in prison.
Right and I think people are overlooking that right now. The brothers have been in prison, as I said, almost thirty five years, so they don't want to get their hopes up too high. But they've told me they're cautiously optimistic. They're hopeful. Really, for the first time in their prison incarceration, they actually have hope. That's something that is about to happen. And many sources are telling me that d A. George
Gascon is going to agree to resent the brothers. But as I told you, there's still another hump that will come late in November when they screw court. Judge is going to either agree with Gascone's recommendation or he will disagree. There are a number of different things that could happen. One is that they may be required to go before the California par Ward and talk about how they become
rehabilitated in prison. A second possibility is that spirit court Judge Ryan will decide that he wants to hold live hearings with the witnesses, and so that could happen, and who knows how long that will take to set up
and execute. And if live hearings are held, Roy Russello, the former member of MNUTO, would be a key defense witness and so it would be like a mini trial where various people are witnesses and take a stand and they'll give direct testimony and they'll losso be cross examined and DA George Gascone, his office is kind of divided between people that were involved in the work on the original trial basically feel the defense is fabricated and the
brothers were never Gascone said that there's another large faction in his office of people that believe the brothers were lested and they think they should be resentenced. So there is fighting going on in the D's office right now. And George Gascone is up for reelection in the general
election November fifth. And so if you had asked me a month ago would I think that George Gascone would do anything before the election, I would have told you that Gascone would not have touched the brother's case with a ten foot poll because he's running for reelection and he does not want to be known as the guy who let the Imminense brothers out of jail. So it's all very interesting now, the different things that are swirling
around each other. And you know, even though we were the original documentary in Me twenty three that exposed the Minanda's menu connection, I'm grateful that Marketers came out, even though it's full of false scenes. And I'm grateful that Netflix released the documentary October seven, because that is full of fact.
Thanks to Robert for helping us to tell this story. You can read his detailed account of this case, including his interviews with the brothers, in his book The Menendez Murders, The shocking, untold story of the Menendez family and the killings that stunned the nation. True Crime Conversations is a Mum of Meer podcast hosted and produced by me Jemma Bath and Tarlie Blackman, with audio design by Tom Lyon. Thanks so much for listening. I'll be back next week with another True Crime Conversation.