Lyle and Erik Menendez were convicted of killing their parents in the 1990s. Their trial was
a spectacle, ushering in an era of reality TV. This is the untold truth of the Menendez
Brothers.
By all appearances, Lyle and Erik Menendez seemed to live an idyllic life. Their father,
45-year-old José Menendez, was a self-made Cuban immigrant who went from Manhattan dishwasher
to West Coast film executive. At age 19, he tied the knot with Kitty, who was two years
his senior.
The Menendezes lived in a posh New Jersey country estate before José's career made
it necessary for them to relocate to a mansion in California. Aside from enrolling the brothers
at an expensive private school, José also paid for thrice-weekly tennis coaching sessions,
in order for the brothers to excel at their chosen sport. Unfortunately, neither Erik
nor Lyle seemed to share their father's itching, burning need to succeed.
From Lyle's academic difficulties to the brothers burglarizing their own neighborhood, José's
frustration allegedly reached the point where he all but eliminated his children from his
will. Judging by how Lyle supposedly deleted a copy of this will from José's home computer
"by mistake," this may have been one of the major catalysts for the crime.
Based on Erik's own recollection, their relationship with their father was far from healthy. In
a weird, twisted way, Erik admired José, even as he constantly controlled, pressured,
and pushed him and his brother to their limits. Perhaps Lyle, in an interview with ABC News
published in 2017, said it best:
"I found that my own childhood prepared me surprisingly well for the chaos of prison
life."
The night of their parents' murder, the police headed to the Menendez residence after receiving
the brothers' 911 call. According to some accounts, the sight of a bawling Erik Menendez
curled up on the front lawn greeted the officers. Upon entering the mansion, they witnessed
a crime scene so brutal, they thought it was the mob's handiwork.
When Sergeant Tom Edmonds of the Beverly Hills Police Department spoke with the brothers
that night, they already had an alibi prepared. After seeing a movie, they went to a food
festival, came home some time before midnight, and stumbled upon their parents' bodies in
the den. Lyle also mentioned that when they entered their home, he caught a whiff of shotgun
smoke.
Despite this strange and somewhat inconsistent detail — as the smoke couldn't have lingered
that long — Edmonds found the brothers' testimonies and trauma so believable, he didn't
ask them to undergo testing for gunshot residue. In other words, Lyle and Erik successfully
lied and cried their way out of trouble that night. In hindsight, considering how the younger
Menendez's acting skills earned him recognition at Beverly Hills High, this wasn't entirely
surprising.
Days later, Lyle hired armor-clad bodyguards for his and Erik's protection, which further
sold their story. After they served their purpose, Lyle fired them without batting an
eyelash.
One would think that the best way for the only heirs of a $14-million estate to get
away with murder would be to keep things low-key. Well, that just wasn't how the Menendez brothers
rolled. After some rather convincing public displays of grief and pain, it didn't take
long for them to dip their hands deep into the million-dollar Menendez cookie jar.
In the months that followed, the brothers blew their insurance payout on a gambling
spree, high-end hotel rooms, condominiums in the posh Marina del Rey area, three Rolex
watches, a $40,000 shopping spree on clothing, and a $64,000 gray Porsche Carrera.
In addition, Erik Menendez purchased a Jeep Wrangler and booked a $60,000-a-year tennis
coach to further his pro-athlete aspirations, while Lyle Menendez reportedly plunked down
$550,000 on a New Jersey restaurant that students frequented for its popular chicken wings.
Lyle also set up a company, Menendez Investment Enterprises, with which he intended to penetrate
the hospitality, entertainment, and real estate industries. He even invested $40,000 in a
Los Angeles rock concert, an endeavor that ultimately failed when his associate bailed
on him.
"Some estimates say that the first 6 or 7 months after the deaths they spent a million
dollars."
In 1988, a year before the gruesome death of his parents, Erik Menendez and his tennis
pal Craig Cignarelli churned out a 60-plus-page screenplay titled Friends. The script featured
the lead character, a wealthy teenager named Hamilton Cromwell, killing his parents to
receive his inheritance. While the screenplay itself wasn't exactly Hollywood-worthy material,
it unsurprisingly became relevant to the investigation. After all, the events in the script paralleled
the real-world crime in which the author's own parents were the victims.
In a 2017 ABC News interview, Cignarelli noted the unnerving similarities between the opening
scene of their screenplay and how the Menendez brothers ended the lives of their parents.
Cignarelli also revealed that Erik trusted his best bud so much, the younger Menendez
confessed to him about the crime, sharing even the gory, hyper-specific details of what
transpired that night. The truth turned out to be so horrifying, Cignarelli was secretly
hoping for Erik to tell him that it was all a joke.
Due to the Menendez brothers' aforementioned knack for thrill-seeking thievery, the court
ordered Erik Menendez to see Dr. L. Jerome Oziel, a Beverly Hills psychologist. Killing
their parents took a toll on Erik's mental health, one that his confession to Craig Cignarelli
was not enough to address. He ended up telling Oziel about it as well, and when Lyle Menendez
found out, he was understandably incensed. The older Menendez brother threatened to silence
Oziel permanently if word got out about their guilt.
After almost five months since their parents' murder, this proved to be the brothers' downfall.
Judalon Smyth, Oziel's estranged mistress, who knew about the recordings, reached out
to law enforcers to tell them about the taped confessions. Los Angeles cops arrested Lyle
on March 8, 1990 in Beverly Hills, and Erik surrendered to the LAPD on March 11. The brothers
essentially roamed free for nearly seven months after the double parricide.
Under normal circumstances, the law would render the recorded sessions inadmissible
in court, honoring the confidentiality clause between therapists and their clients. However,
Lyle's rage-fueled death threat voided the doctor-client privilege of the parties involved.
Still, it took two years before the Supreme Court of California permitted two of the three
tapes to serve as evidence in the brothers' subsequent trial.
Long before YouTube channels, police procedural television shows, and Netflix could feed our
hunger for true crime stories, there was the Courtroom Television Network (Court TV), a
cable television channel established in 1991 that specialized in crime-themed programming
and broadcasts of legal proceedings. When Court TV started airing the Menendez brothers'
trial on July 20, 1993, audiences in the United States eagerly tuned in to the historical
moment.
Due in large part to the tragic details of the case, people at the time couldn't stop
talking about it. According to network founder Steve Brill, the trial showed that even without
star power, sheer drama is enough to keep viewers glued to their screens. Aside from
the brothers, another key player was their attorney, Leslie Abramson. At the time, she
had already gained notoriety as a particularly ferocious defense lawyer. The Los Angeles
Times even wrote about her peers' admiration and respect for her abilities.
Among the most significant and shocking developments in the trial was the revelation that José
Menendez allegedly harassed and assaulted the brothers. The defense team depicted José
as a violent, abusive father and an unfaithful husband, while also accusing Kitty of substance
abuse and neglect.
"Did your mother have tantrums or rages?"
"Yes."
In the end, however, the defense team could not present undeniable proof of any of these
allegations.
From an outsider's perspective, the Menendez brothers case may seem like an easy one. After
all, the sheer amount of evidence should realistically be enough for the jury to reach a decision,
right? Well, not exactly. Lyle and Erik Menendez underwent separate trials, with each of them
having their own jury. Both of these initial proceedings, however, ended in mistrials in
1994, as the juries could not come up with a single verdict for either case.
One year later, the Menendez brothers' retrial took place, under just a single jury. This
time around, however, they no longer had the nation's full attention. For starters, the
presiding judge, Stanley Weisberg, prohibited cameras in the courtroom. Additionally, there
was significantly less time spent on the abuse angle, and the jurors were made to vote on
whether to convict the brothers of murder, not the lesser offense of manslaughter.
And of course, there was the fact that their retrial happened at around the same time as
another high-profile trial — former NFL player O.J. Simpson's.
"If it doesn't fit, you must acquit."
Ultimately, the jury reached a guilty verdict on March 20, 1996, but spared the brothers
from the death penalty. Lyle and Erik received an arguably more lenient punishment — two
consecutive life sentences, with no possibility of parole.
The noteworthy developments in the lives of Lyle and Erik Menendez definitely didn't end
at their incarceration, though. A rather fascinating anecdote from ex-New York Mafia captain Michael
Franzese revealed that the former mob boss actually encountered the brothers during his
time at the Los Angeles County Jail.
According to Franzese, he was able to speak with the brothers about their case while he
was detained there. Throughout their conversations, the brothers allegedly maintained their innocence,
even though the other inmates didn't seem to believe their story. Franzese even noted
that the prisoners particularly hated the brothers for their crime, often hurling threats
of violence and even death at them as they walked into the visiting area.
The reformed mobster also shared that at one point, officers kept Lyle and Erik in separate
cells upon discovering the brothers' alleged escape plan. It was during this time that
Franzese got to know Lyle a bit more, who he described as, quote, "a pretty intelligent
kid."
Interestingly enough, being behind bars didn't put a damper on the Menendez brothers' love
lives. Lyle Menendez's first marriage was to Anna Eriksson, a former model and salon
receptionist who reportedly felt drawn to Lyle after noticing that Erik Menendez was
getting more of the spotlight. After a brief letter turned into an ongoing exchange, Eriksson
relocated to Los Angeles from Colorado, eventually marrying her pen pal.
Based on records from the California Department of Corrections, Lyle got married to Eriksson
in the Men's Central Jail in Los Angeles on July 2, 1996. However, Eriksson found out
that Lyle was writing to other women, including his eventual second wife, Rebecca Sneed. As
a result, the couple divorced in 2001. Sneed, a former magazine editor from Sacramento,
had actually met Lyle a decade earlier. They got married on November 20, 2003.
Meanwhile, Erik also got to know the love of his life, Tammi Ruth Saccoman, as a pen
pal. Their regular correspondence led to them meeting face to face. It was during one of
Saccoman's visits when Erik proposed to Saccoman on bended knee. Saccoman married Erik on June
12, 1999, at the California State Prison. They even co-wrote and edited a book about
their marriage. Despite being barred from conjugal visits, both couples are still together
as of 2021.
It took a grand total of seven years before José and Kitty Menendez obtained justice
for their brutal deaths. By the time they received their life sentences, Lyle Menendez
was already 28 years old, while Erik Menendez was 25. For more than two decades, the brothers
were incarcerated in separate facilities. Erik served his sentence at the Richard J.
Donovan Correctional Facility in San Diego County, while Lyle began his prison life at
Northern California's Mule Creek State Prison.
"If we're not put in the same prison, uh, there's a good probability I will never see
him again."
Despite the fact that they both received double life sentences, Erik told People in a 2005
interview that he was still "working on [his] appeal," as he believed that he did not deserve
to spend the rest of his life behind bars. Reports say that the brothers filed multiple
transfer requests over the years. Regardless, it was only in 2018 when Lyle was finally
transferred to Erik's housing unit in San Diego. When the brothers laid eyes on each
other for the first time in 22 years, they reportedly burst into tears.
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