THIS STORY IS INTENDED FOR A MATURE AUDIENCE. IT IS NOT RECOMMENDED FOR GRADES 6 AND YOUNGER.
Our last issue gave the history behind the Menendez brothers’ case and attempted to explain why two sons from a seemingly perfect family committed parricide. The boys tried to cover up their crime by being the ones to call the police and having an alibi ready: they were at the movies when the murders occurred. They were eventually caught, however, when Erik told his therapist what they had done and the therapist went to the police. After a mistrial, a second trial found them guilty despite their testimony that they had been abused by their father, and they were sentenced to life and prison without possibility of parole.
The last article ended with a big question: if Jose Menendez (the brothers’ father) is the one who hurt them, why did Erik and Lyle also kill their mother? To answer that, let’s go back to when Kitty was younger. Kitty’s life growing up was much like Erik’s and Lyle’s. Her father abused her and had many mistresses, so her mother was depressed and unreliable. Her father ultimately abandoned her and her family, moving away with his mistress when Kitty was just a child, which may have contributed to the depression and mood swings she experienced throughout her childhood and adulthood. After Kitty moved out, she cut off communication with her father and resented her mother.
Knowing this about Kitty’s home life growing up brings up even more questions. Why, if she resented her mother for not leaving her father, would she stay with Jose if he was unfaithful? Did she know Jose was not just a terrible husband but also an abusive father to Erik and Lyle? After all, she should have known what signs to look for. And if she did know what was going on with her sons and her husband, why did she not do anything to stop it?
Jose’s affairs were not a secret to Kitty. Her husband’s unfaithfulness caused her to become depressed and to try even harder to please him. According to Erik and Lyle, Kitty knew about the abuse the boys were enduring, but she took Jose’s side. From their perspective, their mother and father were the same person in a way. The abuse the boys endured from their father was devastating enough, but for the boys to know that their mother took their abuser’s side was heartbreaking. Even worse, Kitty also emotionally and sexually abused Erik and (primarily) Lyle throughout their childhood. In the summer of 1989, the brothers opened fire in their Beverly Hills home, killing not just their father for his abuse but also their mother for her own abuse and her refusal to stop Jose.
Even though this is all very interesting and sheds light on why the murder of alleged abuser Jose Menendez turned into a double homicide, we may still wonder why this case that happened over 30 years ago has resurfaced in the media. The answer is largely that there has been a rise in the popularity of shows and podcasts about true crime in the last few years, and the Menendez case has been one of the most watched/listened to examples. A lot of people have learned about the Menendez brothers from social media. YouTube, for instance, has tapings of the original trials and more recent videos of people explaining what went on. Junior Sadie Meadows explains, “I knew about the case before the Netflix show and documentary because of TikTok.” The fascination started well before streaming services picked the case up, then, and many teens and adults who only vaguely knew about the Menendez case from social media were interested enough to watch the Netflix series Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, which aired in September of this year. A week or so after Monsters came out, a documentary called The Menendez Brothers came out, so interest spiked even more.
Although all these platforms are entertaining, we can’t necessarily trust everything they say. Lyle and Erik argue that Monsters is completely inaccurate–full of lies, in fact–and family members say it paints Lyle and Erik in a bad light. Erik Menendez spoke out and said, “Ryan Murphy [the show’s creator] cannot be this naive and inaccurate about the facts of our lives.” Perhaps a bit more reliable is the documentary, which includes phone interviews with the Menendez brothers, who got to discuss their side of the story.
Despite some inaccuracies, both Monsters and The Menendez Brothers have accomplished something truly important: publicizing the fact that the siblings alleged abuse in their trials three decades ago. Although Erik and Lyle testified that they were abused back in the 1990s, it seems the general public wasn’t aware of that until recently, and this new knowledge has changed many people’s minds about things. Upper School history and criminology teacher John Feagans says, “Before the documentary and all the things that have come up in the news now, I thought that they should get life in prison.” Like most Americans, Mr. Feagans believed the prosecution’s story that the brothers murdered their parents for the money. Students like sophomore Sarah Dunn Sawyer learned about the case through the show and documentary, and she thinks that the “brothers have served their time and should be released from prison.”
Now the Menendez brothers’ attorneys are hoping that the courts will also have a change of heart. Although the boys claimed they were abused during the original trial, there was no proof to substantiate those claims. Now, though, as the new documentary and news outlets have reported, new evidence has come to light. One item is a letter from Erik to his cousin, Andy Cano, that was addressed eight months before the murder. In the letter, Erik said that he feared for his life because of his father. That is not all the new evidence though: there is an affidavit claiming that Jose sexually abused Roy Rosselló, who was a member of the popular boy band Menudo.
With this new evidence, the Menendez brothers’ attorneys have fought to free them from life in prison. Although the Menendez camp was originally pushing to have them home in time for Thanksgiving, a resentencing is currently scheduled for December 11 of this year–which means that the courts will take another look at the evidence and determine if the original verdict was too harsh or if it should stand. In the document submitted for the resentencing, it says that the boys are “no longer a risk to public safety,” likely because the allegations of abuse mean the brothers’ victims were targeted, so they would have no reason to harm anyone else.
In a best-case scenario, Lyle and Erik would be freed immediately (which is what much of the public is pushing for) for time served, but at the very least, attorneys hope to have the “without parole” part of the original sentence removed. Complicating things, though, the December 11 resentencing date was set by the former Los Angeles district attorney. The newly-elected DA says, “You gotta get beyond the Netflix documentary” and promises to review every piece of evidence–old and new–so it seems unlikely that Lyle and Erik will be home anytime soon.
