Episode 391 - The Menendez Brothers Part 1: Silver Spoon Killers

Summary

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Podcast Summary: RedHanded – Episode 391: The Menendez Brothers Part 1: Silver Spoon Killers

Date: March 20, 2025
Hosts: Hannah McGuire & Ash Kelly
Podcast: RedHanded (Wondery)

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Episode Overview

This gripping episode marks the beginning of a two-part deep dive into one of America’s most infamous family murders—the killing of Jose and Kitty Menendez by their sons, Lyle and Eric. Hannah and Ash set out to explore not just the crime, but the twisted family dynamics, privilege, abuse allegations, media circus, and legal intrigue that turned the Menendez case into a cultural phenomenon. The episode weaves between dark humor and detailed crime narrative, aiming to both inform and unsettle.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Crime Scene and Initial Public Reaction

• The episode opens with a dramatic reading of the 911 call placed by Lyle Menendez, reporting the murder of his parents (03:17).
• Police arrive at 722 North Elm Drive, Beverly Hills to find the brothers in hysterics and their parents’ bodies in a "house of horrors" (05:04).
  • Jose: successful CEO, found dead with his head "grotesquely swollen—like a pumpkin" (05:15).
  • Kitty: face and teeth barely recognizable from multiple close-range shotgun blasts (05:32).
• The hosts contextualize the notoriety of the Menendez brothers, especially in the wake of their story’s retelling in Ryan Murphy’s Netflix series, “Monsters,” and widespread TikTok discourse (06:40-08:10).

2. The Menendez Family: From Cuban Privilege to the American Dream

• Jose’s childhood in 1940s Havana is detailed: son of a famous footballer and champion swimmer; rich and well-connected (08:12).
• After Castro’s revolution, a teenage Jose is exiled to Pennsylvania to live with distant family, facing total loss of privilege (09:52-11:30).
  • Ash: “He'd gone from rich kid to refugee and safe to say, Jose Menendez was not happy about it.” (11:05)
• Jose’s drive: branded as both confidence and arrogance; excels at swimming and earns a scholarship to Southern Illinois University, where he meets and swiftly marries Kitty (11:30-12:49).
• Early marital years: Jose works menial jobs to rebuild fortune, often at Kitty’s professional expense due to his gender views (13:08-14:00).

3. Building Wealth and Dysfunction

• Jose rapidly ascends the corporate ladder: from Hertz to COO of RCA Records, then to Live Entertainment in LA, earning half a million dollars a year (19:16-20:45).
  • Hosts focus on his “shark-like” business persona—bold, ruthless, often firing staff, accruing wealth and enemies alike.
• Family’s lavish lifestyle: move from New Jersey to LA, extravagant renovations in Calabasas, mixing with nouveau riche elites (21:23-24:16).
• Kitty’s issues: resigned to housewife role, turns to “prescription pills and martinis” (23:47); described as “Jose with a wig,” both for personality and public support of her husband.

4. Parenting, Privilege, and Early Signs of Trouble

• Lyle and Eric, both athletic “all-American trust fund kids,” fail to meet Jose's grand expectations—despite expensive private schooling and coaching (27:13-29:17).
  • Jose’s relentless “tiger parenting” is tied to his dream of creating Hispanic royalty, even a US president from his sons.
• Both sons get into serious trouble:
  • Lyle caught plagiarizing at Princeton, rescued by Jose’s money (31:10).
  • Eric (with Lyle) involved in “Bling Ring” style burglaries in Calabasas—again, dad pays off victims and hires lawyers to avoid jail (32:37-34:42).
• This pattern of impunity and parental rescue is seen as core to the brothers’ later lack of guilt or fear of consequences.
  • Ash: "Every time Eric and Lyle have done something wrong...their dad got them off it. So it's like, could something go wrong in my life? No way, Jose." (42:25)

5. The Night of the Murders – Facts vs. Motive

• On August 20, 1989: Lyle and Eric execute their parents with shotguns after planning an alibi involving Batman and a food festival; gather shell casings, dispose of evidence, and fake their alibi with friend Perry Berman (38:52-44:41).
  • Extremely graphic and meticulous: “not random—every shot required consciousness and effort” (38:52).
  • Subsequent police mishandling: allow brothers into the crime scene, fail to test for gunpowder residue, missing critical evidence (44:41).
• The brothers behave strangely after the crime: emotionless at the memorial (45:44), excessive spending of their parents’ fortune—a million dollars in 3 months, buying cars, hotels, and even a chicken shop (52:41-53:59).

6. Suspicions, Screenwriting, and Breakthroughs

• Police and public speculation about mafia involvement, fueled in part by the brothers (48:38-49:31).
• Discovery that Eric and a friend wrote a screenplay eerily similar to the murders, and Eric allegedly confessed (53:59-55:31).
• Key Break: Eric’s confessions to therapist Dr. Jerome Oziel, ultimately exposed through Oziel’s mistress Judalon Smith (56:06-62:29).

7. Arrest and Legal Defense

• Lyle arrested in March 1990; Eric returns voluntarily from Israel. Their grandmother insists on their innocence, but extended family has doubts and lawyers up (62:29-64:06).
• Legal strategy pivots with new defense attorney Leslie Abramson, renowned for getting Arnel Salvatierra’s murder charges reduced due to child abuse history (64:06-65:30).

8. The ‘Abuse Narrative’: Fact, Strategy, or Both?

• Eric confesses to Abramson that both boys suffered years of horrific sexual, emotional, and physical abuse at the hands of Jose, corroborated by Lyle (66:21-71:19).
  • Details: sexual abuse under the “Greek warrior” pretext; stories of “mouth massages” (70:15); Lyle abused till age 8, Eric till 18.
  • Difficult confessions: clinical psychologist Dr. Vickery finds their stories credible due to reluctance and shame, contrasted with typically fabricated abuse claims (72:12).
  • Ash: “They repeatedly described [Jose] as a great man, clinging to that myth...” (72:12)
• Kitty’s mental instability: prescription meds, alcoholism, overt jealousy and coldness toward sons, alleged sexual boundary issues with Eric, suicide threats (73:50-76:39).
  • Dynamic described as “a pressure cooker” that may have led to the violence.

9. Event Buildup and Psychological Pressure

• Series of events in summer 1989 suggest growing tension—argument over Eric’s forced stay at home, Kitty humiliates Lyle by snatching his hairpiece (78:31), disclosure between brothers about ongoing abuse, and a confrontation with Jose (79:36-80:49).
• The Menendez brothers claim they genuinely feared for their lives that night, believing their parents would kill them first to prevent exposure—and so they armed themselves in advance (80:49-83:21).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Jose’s Drive:
  Ash: “He isn't typical in what you'd expect of somebody born with the silver spoon. He's never shy of hard work..." (13:49)

• On Parental Frustration:
  Ash: “You work that hard, you get to the point that you are so successful…[and] they are fucking shit. It's gonna be a tough pill to swallow.” (29:17)

• On the Pattern of Impunity:
  Ash: “Because every time Eric and Lyle have done something wrong... their dad got them off it. So it's like, could something go wrong in my life? No way, Jose.” (42:25)

• On The Crime:
  Hannah: “The boys shot their mother ten times…she desperately tried to crawl away…they went back in, Lyle put the barrel of the shotgun to Kitty’s cheek and pulled the trigger…” (38:52)

• On the Outlandish Spending:
  Ash: “Police estimate that the boys spent around a million dollars in just three months. In the 80s…” (53:34)

• On Defense Strategy and Abuse Allegations:
  Ash: "Can I also just say we only have their word for it...Could [Abramson] have planted the idea in Eric? And he just repeats it to her. We don't know." (67:02)

• On the Difficulties of Discernment:
  Ash, closing: “It's really fucking hard to tell this story in a balanced, nuanced way because you have to keep saying allegedly for everything they're saying..." (84:05)

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Timestamps for Critical Segments

| Segment | Description | Timestamp | |-------|-------------------|-----------| | Opening 911 call | Lyle’s frantic report of the murders | 03:17–05:04 | | Jose’s family and exile from Cuba | Menendez origins and resilience | 08:12–11:30 | | Corporate rise and family’s wealth | Jose's ambition and lifestyle | 16:44–20:45 | | Lyle/Eric’s teenage crimes | Early warning signs and parental rescue | 31:10–34:42 | | The murders: detail of events | Execution and evidence clean-up | 38:52–41:37 | | Hysterical funeral and spending spree | Immediate aftermath, suspicious behaviors | 45:44–53:59 | | Eric’s therapy confession | How the case broke wide open | 56:06–62:29 | | Emergence of abuse narrative | Defense strategy and the allegations | 66:21–72:12 | | Climax of familial pressure | Final weeks, family unraveling | 77:22–83:21 | | Closing caveats | Hosts question the narrative and objectivity | 83:53–84:59 |

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Tone and Style

The hosts combine forensic detail with irreverent banter and dark humor, frequently using pop culture references and asides (“no way, Jose” is a running gag/competition). Their tone straddles empathy and skepticism—acknowledging both potential truths and possible manipulations behind the brothers’ claims, and frequently pausing to clarify where evidence is ambiguous or only self-reported.

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Final Thoughts & Next Episode Tease

The episode ends on the knife-edge question: Was the crime an act of self-defense or a calculated, cold-blooded annihilation of their parents for money? The pair urge listeners to remember the ambiguities and lack of direct evidence for the abuse narrative, promising a deep dive into the sensational trials and the complicated aftermath in part two.

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This episode offers a nuanced, layered exploration of the Menendez murders—a tale of privilege, trauma, and the often-fuzzy lines between victim and perpetrator in true crime history.

Transcript

[Ash Kelly]

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[Ash Kelly]

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[Hannah McGuire]

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[Hannah McGuire]

I'm Hannah.

[Ash Kelly]

I'm Saruti.

[Hannah McGuire]

And welcome to Red Handed, sponsored by Kim Kardashian and her Justice League.

[Ash Kelly]

Are you wearing your skims?

[Hannah McGuire]

Do you know what? I'm not. But they're so good. You've got to hand it to a man.

[Ash Kelly]

They are pretty good.

[Hannah McGuire]

They are really good.

[Ash Kelly]

Tmi. I did wear them. I bought some, wore them. I was like, this is great.

[Hannah McGuire]

Yeah.

[Ash Kelly]

Gave me savage ingrown hair.

[Hannah McGuire]

Really?

[Ash Kelly]

Do you remember when I text you?

[Hannah McGuire]

Yes, I do.

[Ash Kelly]

Over Christmas. And I was like, mate, I've got a fucking ginormous cyst. It was an ingrown hair from skims. Well, there you go. Swings and roundabouts.

[Hannah McGuire]

Been warned. Anyway, we're not going to talk about skims or my cysts or probably maybe we'll talk about Kim. I don't know. We'll see how we go. We're not going to start by talking about Kim. We're going to start with a 911 call. Just before midnight on 20 August 1989, Los Angeles Police Department received this emergency call.

[911 Operator]

Beverly Hill Emergency. Yes, police. What's the problem? Sounds. What's the problem? What's the problem? I was trying to kill my parents. Pardon me?

[Hannah McGuire]

What?

[911 Operator]

Who? Are they still there? The people? No, no, no. Were they shot? Were they shot? Yes, they were shot, yes. What happened? I have a hysterical person on trying to get screen for their editing. This is funny. Is the person still there? What happened? We have units around. What happened? I don't know who shot who. I didn't hear anything. I just came home. You came home and found who shot mom and dad? You know what? They're still in the house. The people that did the shooting. Eric, get away from. Okay. Hey, let me talk to Eric. Who is the person that was shot? My mom and my dad. Your mom and dad? My mom and my dad. Okay, hold on a second. Okay, we're on our way over there with an ambulance. Hello, this is police department.

[Ash Kelly]

Yes.

[911 Operator]

Okay, I want you to come outside, okay? Just come out the front door.

[Hannah McGuire]

Responders arrived outside a very swanky mansion, 722 North Elm Drive in Beverly Hills, where 21 year old Lyle Menendez, the caller, and his 18 year old brother Eric were sobbing hysterically. And inside, authorities found a house of horrors. The boy's parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, lay dead in the family's TV room, its elegant cream furnishings now soaked in blood. 45 year old patriarch Jose was slumped dead on his cream couch. In life, he'd been a successful CEO with a winning smile. In death, the picture was less than pretty. His head was grotesquely swollen and the cops described it as looking like a pumpkin. The boy's mother, Mary Louise Kitty Menendez, lay near the doorway, a gruesome trail of blood snaking off behind her. Her face and teeth were mangled. Can't do eyes, can't do teeth. To the point that she was barely recognizable. The couple had clearly been shot multiple times at close range with powerful shotguns. And in just one fatal night, this seemingly perfect family, who appeared to have it all, had been blown apart.

[Ash Kelly]

Literally.

[Hannah McGuire]

Thank you. Just in case you needed that extra, extra detail.

[Ash Kelly]

Now look, not gonna talk down to all of you, listening, watching you've probably already heard about this sensational case. The minute you say the word Menendez, most people are like, oh yeah, yeah, them. Because of course, the deaths of Jose and Kitty Menendez are some of the most infamous slayings in true crime history. And their sons have become unlikely celebrities in their own right. Lyle and Eric's story, of course, featured on Ryan Murphy's hit Netflix anthology series Monsters in September 2024. And since then, every Gen Z tiktoker and their mum has probably made a video about them. So we thought that at long last, after many, many, many DMs from all of you, it was our turn to dive into the Menendez's murky world. So join us on a wild ride packed with scandal, betrayal, million dollar mansions, courtroom showdowns and enough family dysfunction to rival the most melodramatic of soap operas. And probably make your family unit feel quite normal. With a potential release date on the cards for the brothers because spoilers, they're in prison. This is your one stop shop to find out everything you need to know before their resentencing hearing in March 2025. This is the twisted, jaw dropping saga of the Menendez brothers.

[Hannah McGuire]

But before we get into the hows and the whys, we should hit rewind for a second and meet the Menendez des whilst they were still alive, obviously. They were a family with the ultimate American dream success story at the head of the table. An immigrant dad who'd not just made it in the land of hope and glory, he'd absolutely fucking smashed it. But it wasn't quite rags to riches. Born in 1944 in Havana, Cuba, Jose Menendez had a pretty charmed life to start off with. His father Jose Francisco was a famous footballer nicknamed Pepin, who later ran his own illustrious accounting firm. His mum Maria had been a champion swimmer in her youth and was one of the few women to be inducted into Cuba's Sporting hall of Fame at the time. I don't want to be a bitch.

[Ash Kelly]

Do it.

[Hannah McGuire]

There aren't that many people in Cuba. I don't know if being a champion of anything is actually particularly impressive.

[Ash Kelly]

You tell her. You tell that Anyway, he gives a.

[Hannah McGuire]

Shit what I think. They were a superstar family tree and they traced their lineage back to Spain. The Menendez family were also rich in funds and in connections. Just as if not more important. And like his future sons, little Jose was a silver spoon kid to his core.

[Ash Kelly]

But you know what they say, pride tends to come before a big fat fall. And in mid century Havana, a little revolution was about to shake things up.

[Hannah McGuire]

My laser hair removal lady said something so funny yesterday, day before. That's like an equivalent saying to pride before a fall. She's South African, so it might be like an Afrikaans translation, I don't know. But she was like, peacock today, feather duster tomorrow.

[Ash Kelly]

True, true. Although who's getting their feather dusters made with peacock feathers, I'd like to know. Probably the Menendezes. Yeah. Enter Fidel Castro. With his goals of dismantling the social order. He came in like a big old Commie wrecking ball and hit old money clans like the Menendezes hard. The family went from privilege to exile basically overnight. So in 1960, at just 16 years old, Jose was sent to stay with distant cousins in the unassuming town of of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, in the US of A.

[Hannah McGuire]

Do you know the comedian Marcelo Hernandez?

[Ash Kelly]

No.

[Hannah McGuire]

He's on Saturday Night Live. He's half Cuban. He was like, do you know what it's like being raised by a woman who escaped communism? You can't tell her you're having a bad day. She's like, oh, what happened at school? Did someone try and steal your freedom?

[Ash Kelly]

So, yes. Squished into his tiny new attic room, young Jose realised pretty quickly that he was a long, long way away from high society Havana. Chucked into the deep end of an anonymous American high school, he was mocked for his foreign accent and lofty idealism. He'd gone from rich kid to refugee and safe to say, Jose Menendez was not happy about it.

[Hannah McGuire]

But even as a teenager, Jose Menendez wasn't the type of hombre to just accept defeat. Showing the trademark confidence, also known as arrogance, that would go on to define his life, Jose vowed to rebuild his family's fortune and swim his way out of this quicksand of misfortune. And he did. Jose became a star swimmer at his high school and won a full ride scholarship to Southern Illinois University, where he met Mary Louise Anderson, who's known by everyone as Kitty. She herself was pretty impressive. A beauty pageant queen two years his senior, Kitty turned heads wherever she went, including Jose's. And this cocky Cuban freshman had Kitty's head spinning too, with her college roommate saying it was like Kitty had been hit by a bulldozer. After a whirlwind romance, Jose and Kitty tied the knot. In 1963, aged just 19 and 21, Jose's parents, who by now had also fled from Cuba, disapproved of this union, thinking that the couple were too young to get married, which for Catholics is mad but did the lovebirds care? No way, Jose.

[Ash Kelly]

How many times can we say that?

[Hannah McGuire]

I am going to try so many times.

[Ash Kelly]

I mean, if it wasn't in poor taste, I'd be like, that should be the title of this album. But let's come back to that.

[Hannah McGuire]

Okay? So, yeah, whoever gets in there the most wins a margarita.

[Ash Kelly]

Yes. So, yeah, they ignore the parents and they get married. In fact, Jose even moved his new bride into his parents cramped New York City apartment. Then he refocused his efforts on. On rebuilding his lost fortune with characteristic zeal. Now, while he'd kind of taken his foot off the gas during his uni days, now Jose was ready for the next chapter of his rags to riches, back to riches story. He spent his days washing dishes and his nights studying for an accounting degree at Queen's College.

[Hannah McGuire]

Smart people always need accountants and dishwashers.

[Ash Kelly]

And that's the thing with Jose Menendez, right? You can say, absolutely, he came from privilege. And then he has a very sharp reality check when he's sent to the US but he isn't typical in what you'd expect of somebody born with the silver spoon. He's never shy of hard work. Like when he comes here and he's like, all right, this is what I have to do to get back to where I want. I'll roll my sleeves up and I'll wash dishes. Like, he doesn't shirk away from that. From what I can tell now, while Jose is washing dishes and learning how to be an accountant, glamour girl Kitty, who had once dreamed of working in broadcasting, didn't go ahead with that. And that's because Jose felt that that was a man's career. And instead, he pushed her to take a job teaching at a Bronx school. The young newlyweds were definitely broke, but they were crazy in love. They barely had a pot to piss in, but they were happy. Many years later, a few months after his parents grisly deaths, Eric Menendez told a journalist that his mum considered those days to be the happiest of hers and Jose's life. According to Eric, money loosened the ties. Not that Jose and Kitty knew that. Back then, all they knew was that they wanted more.

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[Hannah McGuire]

And like everything else in Jose Menendez's life, when he wanted something, he got it. Jose graduated in the top 10% of his class in 1967 and immediately snagged a corporate job earning $25,000 per year, which was pretty big bucks for the time. Soon afterwards, the pair expanded their family, welcoming Joseph Lyle Menendez in January 1968 and then Eric Gallen Menendez in November 1970. At the time, Jose and Kitty had no idea that these two little bundles of joy would prove to be their undoing. How could they?

[Ash Kelly]

That's so terrifying.

[Hannah McGuire]

Yeah, I know that. Like, there's that saying, like, you know, no parent should bury their child. No child should murder their parents. It's just not an eventuality you consider, is it?

[Ash Kelly]

Quite. Yeah, I was getting my hair done yesterday and my hairdresser was like, talking about how his partner, like, absolutely does not want to have children. They've decided that's the route. And we were talking about like kids and stuff, and he's like, but what if they murder you? And I was like, what a strange, what a strange thing to say. But it happens. Chances are slim, but it happens.

[Hannah McGuire]

I mean, children terrify me because they're so easy to fuck up. And you know, what if they're born a paranoid schizophrenic, can't parent your way out of that one. But even I have never been like, but what if they just push you down the stairs.

[Ash Kelly]

Yeah. It's all for our other podcast, the parenting one, don't do it.

[Hannah McGuire]

Speaking of alternate podcasts, in the realm of make believe that we will Never make Hannah McGuire's, what else don't I know? I just got reminded of this because of the name Jose. For the longest time, I thought the first line of the American national anthem was not, o say can you see, Jose? Jose, can you see? And I was like, that's weird, considering their immigration policy, but I just accepted it for decades.

[Ash Kelly]

Just the first word.

[Hannah McGuire]

Yeah, Jose.

[Ash Kelly]

Wow. Yeah, there you go.

[Hannah McGuire]

What else don't I know? It really worries me.

[Ash Kelly]

It's good to stay curious, though. It's good to stay curious. It's good to stay open minded. I approve of all of those things. And it's also good to admit when you're wrong.

[Hannah McGuire]

It is.

[Ash Kelly]

So you're winning, Hat trick. Thank you, hat trick. Hannah McGuire.

[Hannah McGuire]

Anyway, with the pitter patter of tiny, murderous feet came a big change for Kitty, who gave up teaching and became a traditional housewife on Jose's insistence. After all, they could afford it now.

[Ash Kelly]

What a world when one person's income could support a family of four. So, yes, just to remind us all where we are, it's 1972, and it is then that Jose became Director of Operations at Hertz Rent a Car, bringing home the bacon to the tune of 75,000 bacons a year.

[Hannah McGuire]

A lot of bacons.

[Ash Kelly]

That's a lot.

[Hannah McGuire]

Lot of 70s bacons for sure.

[Ash Kelly]

So much. So much. And during this time, Jose developed a reputation as a cold blooded shark, making his mark in each company he joined by proposing bold restructures that usually just involved brutally cutting down on staff.

[Hannah McGuire]

Ax swinger. Love it. The world needs them.

[Ash Kelly]

Get rid of them. Jose had the business instincts of a pit bull and all the tact of one, too. But it was this combination of grit and tenacity that sent him soaring through the ranks of the corporate world. And little by little, the Menendez fortune started to pile up once again. By the time the 80s rolled around, Jose had become the COO of RCA Records, a label that looked after some of the world's biggest recording artists at the time, including Dolly Parton and Rick Astley. And prepare to be blown away by in not just your 80s boots, but in your bloody 20, 25 boots. His salary at this time was a whopping $500,000 a year.

[Hannah McGuire]

Never gonna let you down. No way, Jose.

[Alaina Urquhart]

No.

[Hannah McGuire]

Damn you, Maguire 1, Bala 0.

[Ash Kelly]

So while Jose hustled as a senior executive in the Big Apple and indulged in a few cheeky extramarital affairs with women that there. Kitty and the boys settled into an affluent upper class life near Princeton in New Jersey. Young Lyle and Eric attended the prestigious Princeton Day School while Kitty lived her very best trophy wife life, filling her halcyon days with charity galas and drinks.

[Hannah McGuire]

With the gals like when the Simpsons move into Scorpio. Scorpio.

[Ash Kelly]

Scorpius, Scorpio.

[Hannah McGuire]

And she just develops a drinking problem because the house is a robot and does everything for her.

[Ash Kelly]

Yes, that is kitty.

[Hannah McGuire]

But in 1985, the Menendez family life was uprooted once more by Jose taking a top role at Live Entertainment, the VHS branch of Carolco Pictures, which brought with it an eye watering new salary and a relocation to Los Angeles. The prospect of leaving her east coast world behind was daunting for Kitty, but she never wavered in her public support of her husband. A business associate later described Kitty as Jose with a wig, dedicated to his cause of making as much money as possible. Have you ever met someone's brother or sister and you're like, oh my God, my aunt. I met his sister once. I was, oh my God, it's an awake. No wig, no wig, no wig. Can't stop. Yeah, pick those names.

[Ash Kelly]

Yeah, for sure. I think it was the most, like, shocking thing. Uni graduation. One guy known throughout uni turned up. I was like, oh my God, his mum is him in a wig. They have the same fucking face.

[Hannah McGuire]

Yeah, it's unnerving, isn't it?

[Ash Kelly]

It is. Don't like it.

[Hannah McGuire]

And Kitty wasn't just Jose in a wig. She just let him do whatever he wanted as long as he was bringing home those big bacons she'd put up with his philandering for. So what was one more sacrifice? Like a move to LA on top of all of that? And if the big move meant that Kitty would become a bit of a desperate housewife, sneaking a few prescription pills in with her martinis to get through the day, then at least she would be in good company. Because in la, the Menendez family were joining a nouveau riche world where appearances were everything and money didn't just talk, it screamed in your face. Jose bought a lavish pad in Calabasas, which is if you don't know where the Kardashians live.

[Ash Kelly]

I didn't.

[Hannah McGuire]

You didn't know they live in Calabasas?

[Ash Kelly]

I did not know that. I'd heard of Calabasas, but not from the Kardashians, because I've never Watched the Kardashians, but from, like, rap songs where they talk about Calabasas, and I'm like, oh, that's a thing, though. Fun fact. My good friend Gloria, who makes music, one of her songs has been picked. It's going to be in the new season of the Kardashians.

[Hannah McGuire]

Oh, my God.

[Ash Kelly]

Amazing. Good vibe. And I was like, fucking, mate. That's. That's big time.

[Hannah McGuire]

That is. That's huge.

[Ash Kelly]

It's gonna be in the episode where. And she was just telling me, I have no idea, but they're going to go to Milan Fashion Week, and my friend Gloria is half Italian, half German, and she was like, let me sing some songs in Italian, because that could also be picked up. And it got picked up, and they're gonna play it when they're doing the Runway scene.

[Hannah McGuire]

Oh, amazing. Good for her.

[Ash Kelly]

That's fun, isn't it?

[Hannah McGuire]

Oh, that is fun. Anyway, if you don't know where Calabasas is, it's as bougie as it gets. And Jose let Kitty splash out on all of the ambitious renovations her heart desired, including moving their swimming pool by just a few feet to achieve the entertaining space of her dreams. Back then, it was all about keeping up with the Menendezes.

[Ash Kelly]

Have you seen that? Alec Baldwin? Is it Alec Baldwin? What's the guy who did the shooting?

[Hannah McGuire]

Alec Baldwin?

[Ash Kelly]

Alec Baldwin and his wife. The one who pretends to be Spanish.

[Hannah McGuire]

Oh, Hilaria.

[Ash Kelly]

Is she pretending to be Spanish or is she pretending to be Latin American? I'm not sure she's pretending to be Spanish. Okay, Right. They've got a new reality show. Well, have you seen the clip?

[Hannah McGuire]

No.

[Ash Kelly]

It's really bad. Like, I. I don't know these people. I've read before that, like, his. His wife pretends to be Spanish and that's like a laughing point. But obviously, after the whole Rust, you know, that lady getting shot and dying on set, they think it's obviously an attempt to PR his image into a better one by letting the cameras in. And there's such a cringeworthy scene where. Cause I've seen clips of this woman speaking with a totally normal American accent, and she grew up in the US and there's a scene where she's doing a little cook along and she's pretending that she's forgotten the English word for onions. And I'm like, no, you haven't. No, you fucking haven't. Classic.

[Hannah McGuire]

Hilarious. No, interestingly, the lawyer who got him off shooting that lady on the set of Rust is defending. Did he? One of Many, obviously.

[Ash Kelly]

Sure, sure, sure, sure.

[Hannah McGuire]

I also, whenever I think of Alec Baldwin, the only thing I can conjure in my mind is he did like a celebrity roast and his daughter sure goes up to the podium and she's like, hi dad, it's me, Arland. And then she plays a voicemail that he left her being how much he fucking hates her.

[Ash Kelly]

Oh my God, he's a bad guy.

[Hannah McGuire]

He'S a bad man.

[Ash Kelly]

Oh God. And she is just fucking cringe when she's like, how you say, how do you say, how you say Saboya? No way, Jose.

[Hannah McGuire]

Oh you dickhead.

[Ash Kelly]

I realize after I finished that little bit I was like, I should have fucking said it then. That's fucking great. I'm going to bring it back up.

[Hannah McGuire]

Just to do it.

[Ash Kelly]

Thank you. Back to keeping up with the Menendez's. Jose Menendez might have achieved his dream of becoming a multimillionaire by midlife, but he was nowhere near done yet because he had even bigger plans for his progeny. Picture it, the sun soaked playground of the rich and famous in late 80s LA. Now in their late teens, lion and Eric were look, handsome is a very like subjective term. I can see why people would think that like they're very traditionally very of the time.

[Hannah McGuire]

It's very 90210.

[Ash Kelly]

Yes, yes, yes, very of the time. Let's say that they're tanned, they look quite athletic and they definitely had bright futures ahead of them. The brothers were also both talented tennis players, with Eric even tipped to go pro. And Lyle again, you know, no like, no shortcomings there visibly because he was also accepted to Princeton in 1987. And unlike their first generation immigrant dad, these two were all American trust fund kids to the souls of their blindingly white trainers. But Jose was determined to make sure they earned every dime he passed on to them.

[Hannah McGuire]

Jose wanted Lyle and Eric to excel in everything they did from school to Sport. Like some mad 80s version of that one guy on LinkedIn who posts inspirational grind culture shit every day. I can't stand it. Winds me up so much of all of these, you know, top level CEOs doing all these seminars. You just need to make a vision board. If it was that easy to be a billionaire, Stephen, everyone would be a billionaire, wouldn't they? It's not how it works.

[Ash Kelly]

My problem though is I don't even mind the billionaire CEOs doing it because I'm like, take it with a pinch of salt. Take it or leave it. Like they actually have done it. It's when the Mid level sales guy at a nothing company is posting inspirational quotes like, over a picture of a mountain. And look, I'm like, get it, get your content, do what you want. Maybe some people will like it, but it is just. It's a bit much.

[Hannah McGuire]

The motivational speaker who has achieved nothing is worse. The worst kind of person.

[Ash Kelly]

Yeah.

[Hannah McGuire]

Anyway. But Jose was kind of like that. He regularly quoted Rules for Success from self help and history books to urge his offspring to follow in his footsteps. He invested in expensive tennis coaches and private tutors priming his son's dinner table conversation topics to ensure that they could charm VIPs with ease.

[Ash Kelly]

And look, Jose Menendez has a lot of problems in the parenting department. I'm not going to say that he doesn't. And maybe it's just because of the way I was raised that I'm like, I think it's just he realizes that his sons are totally fucking useless in many ways, and he is just desperately trying to make sure that they don't fail at life. He's like, have this tutor, have this guy who's going to teach you how to play tennis. Here are some fucking conversation topics because you're boring as fuck. And I'm like, I feel sorry for him. I'm like, you work that hard, you get to the point that you are so successful. You have these two kids, you put all this faith in them and they are fucking shit. It's gonna be a tough pill to swallow.

[Hannah McGuire]

He's just like, look, kids at the golf club. Yes, under no circumstances do you say that they should tax the rich more. No way, Jose.

[Ash Kelly]

Oh, no. God damn it. God damn it. But yeah, I think it's just like. It probably feels like an embarrassment for him, right?

[Hannah McGuire]

I think so, yes. He wants the best possible thing for his children. Obviously there is the argument of like, you've got enough, it's fine, you don't need more. But he really did long to become some sort of like, Hispanic Kennedy 100%. He dreamed of becoming a senator in Florida, pursuing his bold personal mission of making Cuba a US territory to get revenge on Castro. While firstborn, Lyle would one day be the first Cuban American president. Jose had it all figured out. But then came the first snag. As teens, Lyle and Eric weren't exactly living up to Jose's sky high expectations for them. In 1987, during his first semester at Princeton, Lyle was caught plagiarising a psychology essay and faced expulsion.

[Ash Kelly]

Ugh, the shame. And to get caught in 1987 where they didn't Even have plagiarism bloody software.

[Hannah McGuire]

It's quite embarrassing, isn't it?

[Ash Kelly]

You literally just like staple your name to a book and hand it in.

[Hannah McGuire]

This debacle was not part of the plan. And Jose was not going to let it derail him either. He flashed his chequebook and struck a deal with the Dean and got Lyle's punishment reduced to a one year suspension. The head boy in my year at school was almost expelled for sleeping with a sex worker on rugby tour in Brazil. But his parents made a one million pound donation to the school and then he was head boy. I know who you are.

[Ash Kelly]

So does he.

[Hannah McGuire]

And if that story is incorrect, I don't care. Anyway, the one year suspension as a result of the money waggling could only be an unintentional gap year. And using that time, Lyle followed in the well worn footsteps of all Nepo babies the world over. And he became an intern for his dad's company, which is also what the head boy of my year did.

[Ash Kelly]

Look, the thing is, you can be like, that's unfair. But I'm like, parents gonna parent and be like, yeah, so what, My kid's a dickhead, but he's my kid, I'm gonna have to give him a fucking job or an internship.

[Hannah McGuire]

Sure.

[Ash Kelly]

Or throw some money at this. Like, that's life. It wasn't just Lyle though, that was Jose's problem at this point. Cause in 1988, Eric got caught up in a string of Bling Ring style burglaries around Calabasas. Eric and his Brat Pack pals, including Lyle on at least one occasion, hit up homes that they knew belonged to wealthy like parents of like kids they went to school with who were like on holiday or something at the time.

[Hannah McGuire]

Which would have been everybody.

[Ash Kelly]

Yes, they would break into these homes and they actually ended up stealing over $100,000 worth of cash and jewelry that they kept in a storage locker and just dipped into every time they wanted a bit of like extra pocket money. Look, Jose was unsurprisingly, incredibly not happy. And you can understand why. Because it's like I was fucking washing dishes, I give you everything and you're still stealing and humiliating me and just like, no shame, just everything. Everything. That is the worst nightmare of a parent that struggled at least at one point, to give their child everything.

[Hannah McGuire]

Yes, I really think that people who live risk free existences have no self awareness at all.

[Ash Kelly]

So yes, again, I don't want it to sound like I'm just defending Jose, but because he has a lot of problems in the parenting department, like I said. But of course he's fucking raging. And as would become a bit of a pattern, Daddy's money did the talking yet again. Jose paid hefty sums to appease the victims and hired top lawyers to cut a deal for Eric. The result? A slap on the wrist and court ordered therapy instead of jail time. And you can argue, of course, he should have let Eric go down for it. Like teach him a lesson, make him hit like rock bottom and build himself up from there. Which, yes, would probably be the right thing to do. But he also knows his kids are fucking shithead and if he does that, he's fucked for life. And nobody becoming president after they've gone to prison for theft.

[Hannah McGuire]

No way, Jose.

[Ash Kelly]

I quit. Three.

[Hannah McGuire]

Maguire three.

[Ash Kelly]

Yeah, fine. So to dodge further scandal, Jose ended up relocating the family to an even glitzier postcode. You guessed it, 90210. That's right, Beverly Hills, baby, where the family settled into an eight bedroom mansion whose previous occupants included Prince and Elton John. Though I have it on good authority, not at the same time.

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[Mr. Ballin]

You know those creepy stories that give you goosebumps? The ones that make you really question what's real? Well, what if I told you that some of the strangest, darkest and most mysterious stories are not found in haunted houses or abandoned forests, but instead in hospital rooms and doctor's offices. Hi, I'm Mr. Ballin, the host of Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries and each week on my podcast you can expect to hear stories about bizarre illnesses known as no one can explain, miraculous recoveries that shouldn't have happened, and cases so baffling they stumped even the best doctors. So if you crave totally true and thoroughly twisted horror stories and mysteries, Mr. Ballin's medical mysteries should be your new go to weekly show. Listen to Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery in the Wondery app or on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

[Hannah McGuire]

So Apart from minor scrapes with the law and some strict tiger parenting that might have raised a few eyebrows, the Menendez family looked the part. And in the dizzying heights of Beverly Hills, that was all it took. Fake it till you make. It wasn't just a mantra, it was a lifestyle. Because as long as the outside world saw what Jose and Kitty Menendez wanted them to see, the perfect facade of a high achieving family, nobody really thought to ask questions about what might be going on behind the scenes. That is, until that night in August 1989, when suddenly it was the only thing that people were talking about. The number one question in the Hills was who could have wanted to destroy Jose and Kitty Menendez so badly? But Lyle and Eric, for all of their displays of hysterical grief, didn't have to wonder too hard about that one. Because they knew exactly who shot their parents. They did. As for why, that's a bit more complicated.

[Ash Kelly]

At first, we're going to tell you what the Menendez brothers did on the night of the shootings without getting too deep into the emotional cluster fuck that caused it all. Don't worry, we'll get there, we promise. But let's start for now, at least, with the stone cold facts. On 20 August 1989, Lyle and Eric had plans for a fun night out. They'd arranged to meet their pal Perry Berman at the Taste of a Lay Food Festival in Santa Monica after a cinema showing of Batman that would finish at around 9:30pm now, although Perry had waited a while, the brothers never showed up to the festival. It turned out later that they'd had their hands quite full, specifically with a loaded 12 gauge shotgun apiece. So at around 10pm, Lyle and Eric entered the family room at their Beverly Hills home where the Bond film the Spy who Loved Me was playing on the widescreen tv. And within minutes of getting into the house, they had both shot their parents dead.

[Hannah McGuire]

A single shot to the back of Jose's head killed him instantly, blasting parts of his skull and brain across the room in a catastrophic blowout injury. But the brothers kept firing five more bullets, piercing Jose's arms and his body. They used manual pump action shotguns loaded with buckshot, making each shot a laborious and conscious effort, which is important. This wasn't just a random spray of bullets. The boys shot their mother 10 times. Having survived the initial blows to her limbs and her hand, Kitty desperately tried to crawl away whilst bleeding and moaning in agony. She was still alive. Just Lyle and Eric ran back to the car where Eric passed his big brother the ammunition he needed to reload his weapon. And then they went back in the house. When they returned, Lyle put the barrel of the shotgun to Kitty's cheek and pulled the trigger to finish her off. It was a bloodbath, with the couple's remains dripping from the walls and pooling on the parquet floor.

[Ash Kelly]

With blood and brains covering every surface, and with the acrid gunsmoke still swirling in the air, the brothers calmly and meticulously collected the spent shell casings from the floor, which again, very important for later. Then they bolted and they headed straight to the cinema in a bid to cover their tracks there. They tried to buy tickets to Batman, but the cinema refused as the film was almost over. So they got tickets for the next screening. But the brothers ultimately tossed the stubs after realising their timestamps wouldn't work for the alibi that they wanted. So, adrenaline pumping, Lyle and Eric hit the road again. The brothers would later say that they dumped their clothes and weapons and shell casings in a dumpster behind a Santa Monica gas station. Although these were never found.

[Hannah McGuire]

Even if they had managed to get into Batman, surely the police would talk to the cinema people and they'd be like, oh yeah, there were those two guys who came 10 minutes before the end, actually. Yeah, like, it just seems like a very odd.

[Ash Kelly]

Oh, I mean, yeah, there's just, there's many a problem, many a problem. I think the police would have said, no way, Jose, come on. No.

[Hannah McGuire]

Still in the.

[Ash Kelly]

My delivery could do some work on that one. I was just desperate.

[Hannah McGuire]

And after they were turned away from Batman, Eric and Lyle reached the Taste of LA festival at about 11pm, by which time it was closing and their stood up friend Perry Berman had gone home.

[Ash Kelly]

And look, I know that there is a connection. I know that there is a connection. I cannot remember off the top of my head and I won't waste everybody's time, but they just give me such like American Psycho vibes. It's that like that time 80s. I know that Patrick Bateman isn't in LA, but it's kind of that like tanned, hyper, like athletic, fixated with your appearance, like listening to all the pop songs. As we'll see, they're big fans of Milli Vanilli, these two, and it's just like that hyper fixation and this whole like, let's go to see Batman and then like the Taste of la. I know Patrick Bateman never would have seen Batman, but you know what I mean, it's like a younger Patrick Bateman. That's the Vibe I feel.

[Hannah McGuire]

And this is what I mean when I say that people who've lived a risk free existence aren't self aware because nothing has ever gone wrong for them. I really think they don't see a world in which they don't get away with it.

[Ash Kelly]

Of course they don't. Because every time Eric and Lyle have done something wrong, even stealing from people's homes, stealing jewelry from their classmates, parents, homes, their dad got them off it. So it's like, could something go wrong in my life? No way, Jose.

[Hannah McGuire]

Better.

[Ash Kelly]

Thank you. Have we equalised?

[Hannah McGuire]

I don't know if I'm gonna give you the one before.

[Ash Kelly]

Also, can I ask why I went to go watch the rugby at the weekend? Not against my will, but like semi against my will. And I was like, oh, they've equalised. And everyone laughed. Is that something you don't say in sport? And then they all kept saying it for the rest of the day. Oh, they've equal. I said, odd thing. I thought that's the thing people said. You know what I mean, right?

[Hannah McGuire]

In football you can say that. Yeah, but I don't understand rugby. I know nothing.

[Ash Kelly]

And then they were like, I was. It's Equalizer three. I don't get it. Don't get it. Why can't I say equalized? Somebody was it.

[Hannah McGuire]

Because it was a try before a conversion. Maybe that might be it.

[Ash Kelly]

Help. I was like, well, fuck it. I was just trying to take part.

[Hannah McGuire]

There's the danger. Because men love laughing at you. They love it.

[Ash Kelly]

The women laugh too.

[Hannah McGuire]

They were just like.

[Ash Kelly]

They were just glad they weren't the ones that said something stupid.

[Hannah McGuire]

Anyway, Lyle called Perry to apologize for their lateness and asked him to meet them at a local restaurant at 11 o' clock at night. No way, Jose. Before ringing back a few minutes later with a new plan, Lyle suggested that Perry should come over to the Menendez house so they could pick up Eric's fake ID and go out drinking. Probably fed up with being messed around, Perry said that he would just meet them at the restaurant. The brothers didn't keep that date either. Poor Perry. Instead they drove back to their house on North Elm Drive, discovered their parents bodies and made the frantic 911 call we heard at the top of the show. And the rest was history. Kind of.

[Ash Kelly]

Yeah, very kinda. Because that night the LAPD didn't exactly follow proper procedures to find out who had killed Jose and Kitty Menendez. When officers arrived at the bloody scene, the boy's obvious hysteria threw them right off guard, causing them to let standard protocols slip, they let Lyle and Eric into the house, even though it was a crime scene. Gunpowder residue tests weren't done on the men's hands, which would have showed if they had fired guns that night. And if they had, those very same hands, would have been and should have been and could have been instantly cuffed. As a result, the Menendez brothers were thrown one hell of an unexpected life raft. One that would keep them free for the next six months. For now, at least, they were getting away with it. But whether it was cold blooded murder or something trickier and perhaps harder to define, we'll come back to that later.

[Hannah McGuire]

A few days after the deaths, a memorial for Jose and Kitty Menendez was held at the swanky Directors Guild of America Theatre. Stuart Benjamin, a film producer who did business with live, which is the company that Jose worked for, described the service as weird and said that both of the brothers seemed stone cold. Lyle in particular emanated calm and gravitas, almost appearing to act like his dad. He delivered a flawless eulogy repeating his father's favourite themes of greatness and success without so much as a voice crack. Guests were shocked by how composed this 21 year old college kid seemed. And the brothers also chose the 80s bop girl, I'm gonna Miss you by Milli Vanilli to play at the end of the service. Quite a strange choice.

[Ash Kelly]

Strange choice, but I'm glad they're, you know, Milli Vanilla getting some airtime there. So, all in all, there was something definitely kind of off about the whole memorial. But perhaps this wasn't that surprising, because the truth was nobody really liked Jose Menendez. He had a fearsome reputation as a businessman and had definitely made far more enemies than friends.

[Hannah McGuire]

Hey man, take a look.

[Ash Kelly]

True, but people not liking him, they're not a big fan. His own brother in law, Carlos Barelat, called him brutal and said he had an alarming lack of compassion or respect for his colleagues and subordinates, with a tendency to, quote, make people feel very, very small. In fact, nobody had anything nice to say about Jose at all. Except for his secretary, Marzi Eisenberg, who proudly called herself Jose's office wife.

[Hannah McGuire]

Oh, oh, you hate to see it.

[Ash Kelly]

So gross. I mean, you can probably join the dots on that one between Marzi and Jose for yourself. Kitty, on the other hand, because remember, she is also dead, was a bit more of an enigma. She had a few friends in LA and seemed to be described mostly as an extension of her larger than life husband. One of Jose's sisters, Marta Kano, Said that she admired Kitty for being intelligent and a handyman and able to put together a barbecue.

[Hannah McGuire]

That's hard. I've seen the Simpsons.

[Ash Kelly]

It is hard. I don't know if she means like throw a barbecue or build or build a bar. How many barbecues have you seen Kitty Menendez build, Marta? I don't know, maybe loads. But also I would say if I get horribly murdered by my own children in the future, I sincerely hope that, you know, my sister in law has something better to say than I'm a handyman who can put together a barbecue. So yes, not exactly glowing praise after you've been murdered to death.

[Hannah McGuire]

The Menendez's may not have inspired warm and fuzzy feelings in those they met, but it was still hard to imagine who would have killed them in such a brutal fashion. So as it does, the rumour mill got to work and soon word in the press was that this was a gangland style killing with links to organized crime. Police initially suspected the brutal overkill was done to send a message. As in mafia or drug cartel style murders. And let's be real, Jose being a Cuban immigrant probably had more to do with this train of thought than the LAPD would be willing to admit. Whilst officials from Live Entertainment, Jose's employers called this theory bizarre and offensive, the Menendez brothers fanned the flames of speculation.

[Ash Kelly]

Yeah, they were fucking thrilled.

[Hannah McGuire]

That's the best day of their fucking life.

[Ash Kelly]

Yes.

[Hannah McGuire]

Lyle immediately suggested that the killings were business related and name dropped. Someone called Noel Bloom, an associate with Mob Lynx, who Jose had beef with. The brothers hired round the clock bodyguards to show that they feared for their lives. Although Lyle controversially dismissed his protection after just one week, claiming he'd heard from a trusted mafia affiliated source that the brothers were actually safe.

[Ash Kelly]

And this was not the only thing that raised eyebrows. Friends described Lyle becoming a strange, swaggering imitation of his father Jose, overnight investing in businesses and making grand sweeping plans to fulfil his father's legacy. Lyle seemed keen to fill his dad's shoes immediately. And his credit card for that matter.

[Hannah McGuire]

I mean, they will have inherited so much money.

[Ash Kelly]

We'll get to that. So as well as receiving instant access to a $300,000 life insurance policy, the brothers were authorised to use Jose's credit account, which had a $250,000 limit. The piggy bank had been well and truly cracked open, but already there was a creeping fear that the money might run dry sooner than they'd like.

[Omaha Steaks Advertiser]

How?

[Ash Kelly]

Because of how they're spending it. And also because Lyle and Eric had a sneaking suspicion that their father, Jose, had followed through on various threats that he'd made to them over the years and that he might just have cut them out of the will before the killing.

[Hannah McGuire]

And the brothers had pretty good reason to be worried. Just six weeks before his death, Jose had asked his sister and his brother in law, Terry and Carlos Baralt, who we heard from earlier, to become executors of the family estate. Jose apparently confided in Carlos that he was frustrated and disappointed with his sons, not surprised, and was thinking about disinheriting them. So in the weeks after Jose and Kitty were murdered, the boys made covert moves to locate their father's will and uncover its contents. Before anyone else could, Lyle paid a computer expert to search a hard drive belonging to Jose for any recent files with the search terms Will, Eric, Lyle and Menendez. And if he found any of those files, he was instructed to delete them. The boys took a family safe to a friend's house and got a locksmith to pry it open. There was some jewellery in there, but no will. Ultimately, a will from 1981 was discovered naming Lyle and Eric Menendez as the primary beneficiaries of Jose and Kitty Menendez's $14 million fortune.

[Ash Kelly]

Get in, losers. Lyle and Eric are going shopping. On Thursday 24 August, just four days after their parents grisly deaths, the brothers spent almost $17,000 in a jewellery shop snapping up three Rolex watches. And the spending spree definitely did not stop there. Lyle treated himself to a 9 11. Is that how we're saying it? 911? Sure. A Porsche Carrera for 64 grand, while Eric chose a tan Jeep Wrangler for 17,000. The pair also stayed in swanky hotels, including the Bel Air and Belage, running up excessive tabs and partying hard every single night. Lyle even bought his favourite fried chicken shop back in Princeton, because why the fuck not? Police estimate that the boys spent around a million dollars in just three months. In the 80s, Lyle and Eric didn't seem to be behaving much like grieving children. Instead, they were acting like they'd won the lottery. And the LAPD smelt a very expensive rat.

[Hannah McGuire]

About fucking time. As suspicion grew, the LAPD quietly launched an investigation into the Menendez boys. And soon more incriminating details started to surface. From those who knew Eric and Lyle, police learned that Eric and his bestie, fellow Beverly Hills High student Craig Signorelli, had written a screenplay together called Friends. Not exactly like the comedy series we are all familiar with. This version of Friends revolves around a wealthy kid who's called Hamilton Cromwell.

[911 Operator]

Who.

[Hannah McGuire]

Discovers that he is set to inherit $37 million. And then Hamilton Cromwell murders his parents in cold blood. Craig even told police that Eric had confided in him about being involved in his parents death. Although apparently Eric qualified everything with the words it could have happened.

[Ash Kelly]

It's very confusing. Craig is like clearly very conflicted. Like he does tell the police, you know, what Eric had said to him, but he's also like, I don't know, it could have happened. Like I don't know, I'm just telling you. But he's obviously like, doesn't want to believe that his co script writing buddy actually murdered his parents because Craig's just like a fucking normal guy.

[Hannah McGuire]

And he did maintain his friend's innocence. But he also agreed to wear a wire and to try and get Eric to confess in a recorded meeting that went down in November 1989. Ultimately though, the wire exercise was a dead end. Eric didn't admit to anything on tape. No way, Jose. But by this stage, the LAPD were utterly convinced that Eric and Lyle had played a role in their parents deaths. They just couldn't quite prove it.

[Ash Kelly]

But despite mounting police pressure, the Menendez brother's downfall ended up coming from a totally unexpected Source. After the 1988 burglaries, Eric was ordered, if you remember, to attend regular therapy sessions. He hadn't engaged much in these sessions, but by late 1989 he was struggling mentally and turned to his assigned shrink, one Dr. Jerome Ozil. In contrast to Lyle's swaggering confidence, Eric said that he felt like a ghost, haunted by what he and his brother had done to his parents. In the aftermath of the shootings, Eric saw Ozil for regular therapy sessions and began to let slip some disturbing details. He confided in Dr. Ozil about the unsettling nightmares that he was having about his parents deaths, appearing incredibly troubled, and even expressing suicidal thoughts. And then on the 31st of October.

[Hannah McGuire]

1989, All Hallows Eve.

[Ash Kelly]

Uh huh. Eric blurted out a sudden confession. We did it. And presumably Dr. Ozil was thinking, no way Jose.

[Hannah McGuire]

I don't like that one. Still though, that Halloween, Dr. Jerome Ozil began playing a very dangerous game. He brought Lyle into a session with Eric and Lyle was furious at his brother. But Ozil assured them that he was bound by patient doctor confidentiality to keep their secret. But he did need a few more details. He interrogated the brothers about the night of the murders. He asked things like how they'd felt why they did it. Obvious things like that. Lyle and Alec allegedly revealed that they hatched a plan to murder their parents after watching a film about a son killing his father. They said that the pressure they were under and the control that Jose exerted on their lives had become unbearable and their only option was to kill him. And unfortunately for them, this meant taking their mum out of the equation too. According to Ozil, the boys described Kitty as a pathetic shell of a human being and reasoned that she would be unable to survive without Jose. Very twisted family annihilator kind of rhetoric, isn't it?

[Ash Kelly]

Yeah, I was gonna say, I think please remember this, please remember the things that they're saying to Dr. Ozil at this point, the way that they're rationalizing their behavior. Because Hannah is completely right. This idea of like it's a mercy killing. I was under too much pressure. I couldn't keep up with what they wanted. It was better off this way. Classic, classic, classic psychopathic family annihilator mentality. When the story shifts later, don't forget that this is what they said initially to a therapist who by the way is telling them, I'm not going to tell anybody, so why not tell him the whole truth at this point, if there is a different truth?

[Hannah McGuire]

Ozil would later go on to allege that this twisted logic led the boys to callously murder their parents on the night of 20th August 1989 as a part of a calculated plan.

[Ash Kelly]

So why is Dr. Ozil continuing to conduct these therapy sessions with two self confessed murderers? We're going to find out. Because Dr. Ozil is not exactly on the straight and narrow himself. Now let's talk a little bit about patient doctor confidentiality under Californian law at the time basically meant that a therapist technically was not allowed to disclose information about a past homicide. But this crucially does not apply when the therapist believes that there is an active threat.

[Hannah McGuire]

Good.

[Ash Kelly]

Yes, thank fuck for that. Now Dr. Ozil said that Lyle was out of his mind with rage, that Eric had cracked and he had threatened to murder him and Ozil if the doctor told anybody about what the brothers had done. If this was true, if Lyle had said this, which I can absolutely believe that he did, Ozil would have been well within his rights to report them. But he didn't.

[Hannah McGuire]

No way, Jose.

[Ash Kelly]

Instead, the brothers alleged confessions would ultimately be exposed along with Dr. Ozil's own dirty laundry in the messiest way possible, thanks to an iconic yet slightly nutty woman named Judalon Smith.

[Hannah McGuire]

Why is it Smythe I thought that.

[Ash Kelly]

I watched the show. I'm pretty sure it was Smyth.

[Hannah McGuire]

Judalon was an eccentric Hollyweird crystal saleswoman with a big personality and even bigger sunglasses. She walked so that Gwyneth Paltrow could run. She was Dr. Ozil's mistress on top of all of that. And when they weren't shagging, he'd give her off the books therapy while spilling the beans about his patients.

[Ash Kelly]

Ozil's on one fuck.

[Hannah McGuire]

So as a result of this, De Lan had plenty of dirt on this less than ethical doctor. Crucially, he had confided in her about the Menendez brothers confession, hinting that there was $14 million at stake if he played his cards right. Which obviously suggests he was trying to blackmail the brothers with his silence, or lack thereof. But as things grew rockier for her and Dr. Daddy, as he apparently made her call him, that is so vile. Teudalon ended up going to the LAPD to report her weird boyfriend for rape and being a fucking horrible guy. The police though, were much more interested in what Judalon had to say about the Menendez case. So when she let slip that Dr. Ozil had tapes of the brothers confessing to the killing of their parents, the LAPD figured that that just had to be enough for them to finally pounce.

[Ash Kelly]

And so, on 8th March 1990, Lyle was about to take Eric's brand new Jeep for a spin with two pals when armed police officers surrounded the car and yelled for him to get out. In a dramatic showdown, Lyle was cuffed and shoved face down into the pavement of the street where his parents had died over six months ago. He was finally under arrest on suspicion of their murders. As for Eric, well, he was out of the country. He was in Israel playing a tennis tournament at the time of Lyle's arrest. Eric flew back to LA via London and surrendered three days later. As shockwaves rippled throughout Beverly Hills, the Menendez family, the Wider family, were reeling too. Lyle and Eric's paternal grandmother, Maria Menendez, swore blind that her grandsons were innocent, proclaiming with zero evidence but total conviction that she still believed it was the mob. And look, I get it. It's so easy to be like, oh my God, they're so stupid for believing, like who wants to believe that their grandkids murdered your son and daughter in law.

[Hannah McGuire]

Yeah, your son who achieved the American dream. Quite.

[Ash Kelly]

But while Maria may have been saying that out loud, the rest of the Menendez family weren't too sure about this. The boy's relatives rallied around them. But a few of them definitely had their suspicions and they weren't going to just throw them to the wolves. They lawyered the lads up to their eyeballs and vowed to prove their innocence. Whatever they probably secretly thought.

[Hannah McGuire]

The brothers stayed incarcerated at the LA County Jail for three years before their case went to trial in 1993. And their legal defence was initially on pretty shaky ground. The case had been all over the headlines and pretty much everybody believed that Lyle and Eric were just two spoilt rich kids who'd killed their parents for their inheritance. And for a long time, nothing the boys said gave anyone any reason to think differently. Until Eric got a new lawyer called Leslie Abramson. Abramson was small in stature, but larger than life, with corkscrew blonde curls and charisma oozing from her very paws. One journalist described her as a 4 foot 11 Little Orphan Annie look alike who was 104 pounds of pure dynamite. Famously, Abradson had defended arnel salvatierra, a 17 year old boy who shot his dad in 1988. And she managed to reduce his murder charges to manslaughter after successfully arguing that Arnel had been abused by his father. And Salvia Terra ended up just getting three years probation. Not custodial.

[Ash Kelly]

Yeah. So Leslie Abramson was hot shit. And perhaps more importantly, Eric trusted her to defend him. Leslie and Lyle's lead attorney, Jill Lansing, built up a natural rapport with the brothers during their three year incarceration at the L A County Jail. For months, Lyle and Eric had maintained a stony silence about why they had pulled the trigger multiple times that night in 1989. When pressed, they repeated the same old lines about their loving father and mother. But Eric had been cracking for a while by now and finally he crumbled. Eric confessed to Leslie that there was a darker truth to the Menendez family that he and Lyle had been protecting all this time.

[Hannah McGuire]

Leslie Abrahamson listened in horror as Eric, shaky, distressed and stumbling over his words, revealed that his father, Jose Menendez, was a monster. Eric added that Jose had subjected both brothers to horrific emotional, psychological, physical and sexual abuse from their early childhood. And in August 1989 they'd both finally snapped and fought back. And for Leslie Abramson, who had done this before, this news was a game changer.

[Ash Kelly]

Can I also just say we only have their word for it, that Eric reveals this information to them. So it's said there, like he then cracks and tells Leslie Abramson that this is what's really happened. It's all happened behind closed doors. So it is also Conceivable because Leslie Abramson has successfully argued this case of like abuse being the reason for murder. Successfully very, very recently before this case and seen it succeed in a court of law. Presumably it sat behind the scenes with the brothers like, give me fucking something.

[Hannah McGuire]

Yeah.

[Ash Kelly]

And they're like, dunno, don't know what to say. He's a piece of shit who made me work too hard and I was not very good at tennis and he wanted me to be better and I was never gonna be president. And she's like, right, how about this? And could she have planted the idea in Eric? And he just repeats it to her. We don't know. We don't know. So she's taking it all with a pinch of salt and just putting it out there that we do not know.

[Hannah McGuire]

Yeah. I mean it's solid gold for her.

[Ash Kelly]

Yeah.

[Hannah McGuire]

It could potentially save her clients from the death penalty. And it also provided a startling new insight into the Menendez family that was beyond anything previously considered by investigators. And those who knew Jose and Kitty while they were alive and even those who knew their sons. And that silver spoon in Lyle and Eric's mouths was looking pretty rusty. So let's meet the real Menendezes.

[Ash Kelly]

Yeah. According at least to the story that Lyle and Eric tell in Jose, many people saw a hot blooded Latin man who wanted the best for his American born sons. They didn't look, or perhaps didn't want to look any deeper than that. Their patriarch was clearly a tough taskmaster. That much was obvious to the tennis and swimming coaches who witnessed him brutally berating his sons after each and every tournament. One swimming coach in fact recalls how Eric's self confidence was battered because everything he did was never good enough for Jose, who demanded perfection. And yes, I'm not going to sit here and say that is not incredibly abusive. Of course it is. But then this was also hardly unusual in the ultra competitive circles that the Menendez's ran in. A woman named Sina Hamilton, who's founder of Miami's EastAble junior tennis tournament, remarked that many sports parents behaviour is on the edge of child abuse, saying that if that alone was the reason for murder, we'd be seeing quote, wholesale slaughter in the US Juniors.

[Hannah McGuire]

I believe that.

[Ash Kelly]

Me too.

[Hannah McGuire]

But according to Eric, Jose's demanding nature was just the tip of the iceberg. Behind the gates of their Beverly Hills mansion in the 80s, far darker secrets were tearing the Menendez family apart. In a series of faltering confessions, Eric told Leslie that Jose began sexually abusing him when he was just 6 years old, and that abuse lasted until he was 18 and only ended when Jose died. While Lyle found it even tougher to admit, he ultimately corroborated Eric's claims and admitted that he was also abused between the ages of 6 and 8.

[Ash Kelly]

They said that sexual boundaries between them and their father Jose were incredibly warped. Apparently history buff, Jose allegedly urged the boys to think of themselves as Greek and Spartan warriors, who, according to Jose, psyched themselves up for battle by engaging in male bonding rituals. He would bathe his sons after their sports activities, rubbing down their muscles and encouraging them to reciprocate. This escalated to include the boys giving Jose what he called mouth massages, oral sex. And apparently Jose had told the boys that this was just a normal part of a father son relationship. Jose would make sure to separate the boys when he molested them, and according to them, they lacked the vocabulary to talk to each other about it. Lyle admitted that for a time when they were young children, he started playing with Eric in an inappropriate way, using a toothbrush as he was trying to normalise what his father was doing to him.

[Hannah McGuire]

While Lyle said that he eventually stood up to Jose and told him to stop around the age of eight, Jose continued to abuse Eric for years without Lyle's knowledge. Eric recalls how over time, Jose's cruelty intensified when he was alone with him, raping him at the age of 10, taking sadistic pleasure in inserting things into him and pricking him with sharp objects during abuse sessions. As he reached his late teens, Eric felt utterly powerless to resist his father, acting out his sick urges on a regular basis. By this stage, Jose had stopped pretending that the sex was normal and instead used it as a form of punishment whenever Eric disappointed him. Jose just told Eric to go to his room and wait and Eric would know what was coming next.

[Ash Kelly]

Throughout these confessions made to Lesley Abrahamson and forensic psychologist Dr. William Vickery, both Eric and Lyle still found it hard to talk frankly about their father. They repeatedly described him as a great man, clinging to the legacy that he'd sought to craft while he was still alive. Like some familiar myth. Dr. Vickery noted that he believed the Menendez brothers were genuine because their disclosures were like pulling teeth. In contrast to when people are lying about abuse, they tend to reveal everything straight away because they're so keen to be believed. Lyle and Eric had spent so long lying about Jose that, according to this doctor, finally being honest was a huge adjustment. And this culture of fear and silence had meant that the brothers had never fully disclosed the abuse to their extended family members, although certain things had allegedly slipped through the cracks and this is one of those. So the brother's cousin Diane remembers being a teenager when 8 year old Lyle had asked her if he could touch her down there, revealing that he and his dad did that together. Diane told her aunt Kitty, who insisted this was a lie and the incident was swiftly swept under the rug. Eric also apparently confided in another cousin, Andy Kano, about weird sexual stuff that would happen between him and his dad, trying to check if this was a normal father son thing. But Eric had begged Andy not to tell anyone, so Andy had kept it a secret.

[Hannah McGuire]

So that's Jose. What about Kitty? Her sons claimed that her mental health had been unraveling for years. She drank heavily and proudly called her chosen poison cognac, a high class drink and it's disgusting. She would take 13 different prescription medications to get through the day, including Mommy's Little Helper Xanax. Kitty was hospitalised multiple times for overdoses, but always checked herself out. Kitty's paranoia and jealousy over Jose's many affairs consumed her. She tracked down his mistresses, stalked them and hired private investigators quite a few times. And reportedly, she freely told people that she didn't love her sons, especially Lyle. She'd never been that close with him. She was more protective over Eric, but deep down she resented the pair of them because they'd stolen Jose from her. Motherhood had cost her everything, her career, her body, her marriage. And she repeatedly warned her niece Diane that children can drive a wedge between husband and wife.

[Ash Kelly]

And according to the brothers, Jose wasn't the only one who displayed sexually inappropriate behaviour during their childhood. When they were kids, Kitty allegedly showed the boys photos of her in lingerie and swimsuits and asked them if they thought she looked good. The boys claimed that she'd also often walk around topless and naked in front of them. Eric says that between the ages of 11 and 13, Kitty would invite him to sleep in her bed and once even asked her to touch her everywhere. The boundaries at home, according to the brothers, was so twisted that young Eric and Lar used to fight over who got to sleep in their mum's bed when Jose was away on business.

[Hannah McGuire]

In contrast to Jose's rigid and controlling nature, the brothers felt that their mum, Kitty, was out of control. She was emotionally volatile, exploding into fits of rage seemingly out of nowhere. Lyle described Kitty as being totally unpredictable, consistent only in one how much she hated him. She constantly slammed Lyle's girlfriends. She called them bimbos and gold diggers, etcetera she also had quite an intense paranoia about STDs in the house, labeling a model that Lyle dated in 1989 as a slut who probably had AIDS. And he claimed that she made him eat off paper plates for weeks. In another bizarre move, Kitty allegedly ordered Eric to get a girlfriend within six months and took an obsessive interest in his sex life.

[Ash Kelly]

By 1989, Lyle and Eric felt like their mother was spiralling toward total self destruction. According to them, she once threatened to kill the whole family by poisoning their food. And apparently after that, Jose didn't trust her cooking and often took the boys out to eat instead. Kitty reportedly bought several guns, which also alarmed her sons. They apparently also found suicide notes in the house and feared that she might take her own life and or theirs. The power dynamic in the house, according to Lyle and Eric, had shifted. Even Jose, once an unshakeable force, seemed intimidated by Kitty and did everything he could to placate her moods.

[Hannah McGuire]

Apart from shagging his secretary, obviously.

[Ash Kelly]

Yes.

[Hannah McGuire]

Off the table, yes. No way, Jose.

[Ash Kelly]

Lyle later summed this all up by saying, she seemed to be very mad at the world.

[Hannah McGuire]

Whatever had been really going on for the last few weeks of Jose and Kitty Menendez's lives, the house on North Elm Drive was like a pressure cooker. And with each painstaking notch of the dial, something was going to have to give. The first notch came when Eric discovered that Jose had paid a chunk of money to ucla, where he was due to start college, to avoid the requirement for him to live on campus. And that meant that Eric would be stuck in the Menendez mansion at his father's mercy.

[Ash Kelly]

And you could read that as Jose just being like, I want to keep you here because I am abusing you and I don't want you to escape my clutches. But you could also read it as Eric was the one that was part of that fucking Bling Ring style, like theft gang. And he's like, I need to keep you where I can keep a fucking eye on you. Like, it could be both. It could be either. Like, we just don't know.

[Hannah McGuire]

The second notch. During a heated argument, Kitty lunged at Lyle and ripped off his expensive hairpiece.

[Ash Kelly]

That scene, like, I did watch Ryan Murphy's Monsters. I did watch it. And yeah, that scene is just like, what the fuck?

[Hannah McGuire]

I mean, being bald at 18 is however old he is.

[Ash Kelly]

Yeah, he's like in a.

[Hannah McGuire]

Too young to be bald, but he'd.

[Ash Kelly]

Been bald from, like his late teens.

[Hannah McGuire]

I mean, that's gonna take a chunk out of you.

[Ash Kelly]

Yeah, and so does Kitty when she pulls it off.

[Hannah McGuire]

Yes, she did. As Lyle screamed in pain, Eric gaped in shock at his brother's bald, shiny bonce. Because even Eric, even his brother, didn't know that Lyle had been wearing a toupee for years. Over two years, in fact, he'd started to go baldy in high school. And his father made things much worse by insisting that the hair loss had to be covered up immediately because a politician needs good hair. Literally trying to think of one. Bald president can't do it.

[Ash Kelly]

Was Winston Churchill bald president? Yeah, I was just thinking politicians.

[Hannah McGuire]

Nah, I'm sticking with the American. The good, the whole heart, the whole all American dream. Yeah, we got loads of baldies.

[Ash Kelly]

Yeah, we have.

[Hannah McGuire]

We're more concerned with ancestral wealth than we are with coiffure. In the aftermath of the rug pulling, the boys claim that they lamented to each other how secrets were tearing their family apart. And Eric confessed to Lyle that the sex stuff with their dad was still happening to him. The next crank came when Lyle supposedly blurted out to Kitty that Jose was abusing Eric, to which she oddly scoffed that she wasn't stupid and she'd always known. And finally, the last straw, according to the Menendez brothers, a shaking Lyle confronted Jose, warning him to stay away from Eric or he would tell everyone the truth. Jose cryptically responded that Lyle had made his choice and now Jose would have to make his. Lyle says that he took this the only way he knew how, as a threat.

[Ash Kelly]

Because by this point, according to Lyle and Eric, they were convinced that their parents would kill them before the abuse could be revealed. So they decided to arm themselves with their own protection. Two days before the killings, on Friday 18 August 1989, the brothers drove to a sporting goods store in San Diego on a mission, which I would like.

[Hannah McGuire]

To point out is quite far.

[Ash Kelly]

Eric purchased them two 12 gauge shotguns using a fake ID that in fact belonged to, to Lyle's former roommate back in Princeton, a guy named Donovan Goodrow. They asked the manager for advice on ammo, who recommended buckshot over birdshot. If they, quote, really wanted to stop a person that night, the boys say that they hid their loaded guns under their beds, preparing themselves for an attack.

[Hannah McGuire]

But the next day came with a surprise. Jose and Kitty dragged their sons out for a family shark fishing trip from Marina Del Rey. Swimming in paranoia, the boys said that they were convinced their parents had nefarious motives for the seemingly wholesome outing. I mean, killing sharks isn't my wholesome, but fine. The boys claimed that they were terrified that Jose and Kitty would push them overboard and feed them to the sharks or perhaps stage some sort of tragic accident to stop their dirty secrets coming out. Unarmed and panicking, the brothers said that they were literally at sea. But the boat's captain, Bob Anderson, didn't notice too much out of the ordinary. Just your average snooty, rich family with sulky grown up kids who wanted to avoid their parents at all costs. And in the end, nothing happened. By Sunday evening, though, the final night of Jose and Kitty Menendez's lives, the pressure cooker finally exploded. Eric says that during a blistering row involving the whole family, Jose told him to go to his bedroom and wait for him, something that he says was a euphemism for rape. But then the boys claim that Jose suddenly pulled Kitty into the family room and shut the doors behind them. And that door shutting, according to Lyle and to Eric, could only mean one thing. Their parents were going to kill them. Lyle screamed, it's happening now. And told Eric that they had to grab their guns.

[Ash Kelly]

Moments later, Lyle and Eric Menendez brutally shot their parents to death. This, at least, is an undeniable fact. But was anything else they said true? And if so, would the circumstances around the crime have an impact on their punishment? And perhaps more importantly, should it? That, our friends, is a whole nother story, one we will dive into next week with the trials of Eric and Lyle Menendez. So you should have to stay tuned.

[Hannah McGuire]

Yeah, yeah. May peace be with you.

[Ash Kelly]

Uh huh. Take care.

[Hannah McGuire]

You'll find out what we think about.

[Ash Kelly]

Yeah.

[Hannah McGuire]

What they have said.

[Ash Kelly]

Yeah. And all I will say before everybody like loses their mind about what opinion you have. And maybe what we've sort of talked about this episode is it's really fucking hard to tell this story in like a balanced, nuanced way because you have to keep saying allegedly for everything they're saying. It's not to say that I don't think that possibly could have happened. Like I said, we'll talk about if it did happen, what my opinion is on the impact that that should have on the brothers, but also we don't have any evidence for it. And the pressure cooker situation, I think some of the stuff they're saying is definitely true about arguments, things like this pressure building up, but also remember the things they tell us outside of this. They knew that their father was thinking about changing the will. That's also what this argument could have been about. The threat, the immediate threat that Lyle and Eric, particularly Lyle, could have been thinking they were facing was being disinherited, not being about to be murdered. Yeah, so we just don't know. We just don't know. But we'll talk about it more next week. So we'll see you then.

[Hannah McGuire]

See you then.

[Ash Kelly]

Bye.

[Alaina Urquhart]

It's all a lighthearted nightmare on our podcast Morbid. We're your hosts. I'm Alina Urquhart.

[Ash Kelly]

And I'm Ash Kelly.

[Alaina Urquhart]

And our show is part true crime, part spooky and part comedy. The stories we cover are well researched. Of the 880 men who survived the attack, around 400 would eventually find their way to one another and merge into one larger group with a touch of humor. Shout out to her. Shout out to all my therapists out the years. There's been like eight of them. A dash of sarcasm and just garnished a bit with a little bit of cursing. That motherf er is not real. And if you're a weirdo like us.

[Ash Kelly]

And love to cozy up to a.

[Alaina Urquhart]

Creepy tale of the paranormal, or you love to hop in the Way Back machine and dissect the details of some of history's most notorious crimes, you should tune in to our podcast Morbid. Follow Morbid on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to episodes early and ad free by joining Wondery plus and the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

[Lawless Planet Narrator]

How hard is it to kill a planet? Maybe all it takes is a little drilling, some mining, and a whole lot of carbon pumped into the atmosphere. When you see what's left, it starts to look like a crime scene.

[Hannah McGuire]

Are we really safe? Is our water safe? You destroyed our tap.

[Lawless Planet Narrator]

And crimes like that, they don't just happen.

[Ash Kelly]

We call things accidents.

[Alaina Urquhart]

There is no accident. This was 100% preventable.

[Lawless Planet Narrator]

They're the result of choices by people. Ruthless oil tycoons, corrupt politicians, even organized crime. These are the stories we need to be telling about our changing planet. Stories of scams, murders and coverups that are about us and the things we're doing to either protect the earth or destroy it. Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes of Lawless Planet early and ad free right now by joining Wondry in the Wondry app, Apple podcasts, or Spotify.