Cold Hard Facts: The Menendez Brothers
The 1989 case that has shocked the world for over 30 years
— Beverly Hills, California, August 20, 1989: Two boys burst into the doors of their family home. For the next few minutes, Lyle and Erik Menendez would shoot and kill their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, in an incredibly gruesome manner. The boys then left the scene of the crime where they would go to a movie, after which they would come back to call the police. Later on, the boys would accept guilt for killing their parents but claimed they did it in self-defense against their sexually abusive parents.
Even though it has been over 30 years since the murder of Jose and Kitty Menendez, recently there has been a resurgent of interest in the case that once left the nation divided in opinions. On popular video app Tik Tok, hundreds of thousands of people swarm to the many videos about the Menendez brothers. The comments of these videos are flooded with people protesting that the brothers killed their parents in self-defense. Recently, the TikTok user’s call for release was heard. This is was due to the part that the Menendez brothers were gaining popularity once again. Even though the case is very widely publicized, the facts of the case seem to be looked over quite a bit. So what are the facts? Did the boys really kill their parents in self-defense? Or was it for something much darker?
The History Of Jose And Kitty
Jose Menendez was born into a well-off family of swimmers in Havana, Cuba until he was 16 years old when Fidel Castro overthrew the Cuban government and sent the country into shambles. Scared and desperate for the future of their son, Jose’s family sent him to America where he was scared and alone with his sister’s fiance. But this didn’t stop Jose from being academically and athletically skilled. He worked very hard in school, but he wasn’t able to attend an Ivy League college on account of him not being able to afford it. So after high school, he ended up attending Southern Illinois University. He later married a woman named Mary Louise Anderson, or Kitty as she was called. They then went on to have two children, who eventually became their demise.
Mary Louise “Kitty” Anderson was born into a middle-class family in Suburban Chicago. It was said that her home life was unhappy and abusive, as her father, an air conditioning business owner, beat and abused Kitty and her mother. He later abandoned his wife and child to run off with his mistress which subsequently created a very depressed child. She also attended Southern Illinois University where she acquired a degree in Elementary Education. As previously stated, Kitty married Jose in 1964 after meeting at the college. Both sides of the family did not want the couple to get married. Kitty’s because of Jose’s Cuban heritage, and Jose’s because of Kitty’s divorced parents.
When Kitty gave birth to her first child, Lyle, she ended up quitting her job and became a full-time mother and homemaker. But even though the relationship between Kitty and Jose seemed perfect and ideal, Kitty was described as high-strung and constantly stressed out about her husbands’ affairs. To cope with this, it was said that Kitty was highly dependant upon drugs and alcohol. However, when this topic is researched, there is little to no evidence that she had severe issues as it was described. Kitty cared a great deal about appearances and although she most likely was an alcoholic, there was quite a bit of pressure to be perfect. Alcohol would’ve dismantled the illusion of a perfect family that Jose and Kitty worked so hard to maintain. But it was said by her therapist, that Kitty was incredibly depressed and contemplated suicide a great deal.
The Upbringing of Lyle and Erik Menendez
Joseph Lyle Menendez was born on January 10, 1968, in New York City. Erik Menendez was born on November 27, 1970, in Blackwood, New Jersey. The brothers, although born two years apart, were as close as brothers could be.Oftentimes branding them rude or cutthroat by some past friends of theirs. In 1986 the family moved to Southern California where Jose had gotten a job at a failing company called Live Entertainment. When the boys moved they fell into a very toxic and troubled group of friends. These boys, despite being incredibly wealthy, would go on to rob houses and steal hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of jewelry and other valuable objects. At one point, Lyle and Erik were caught for these robberies and held by officers. Jose forced Erik to take the fall for the robberies and crimes in order to protect his now adult son, Lyle. Because Erik was a juvenile, his sentence was no jail time and just community service. Other than the adrenaline of robberies, the boys loved tennis and it became one of their biggest hobbies, so much so that even when Lyle was accepted into an Ivy league school, he only really cared about tennis. Lyle’s grades in college weren’t amazing. He was failing most of his classes and actually ended up getting suspended from the school for a year for plagorism. When Jose found out about this he immediately went down to the school to try to pay off his son’s suspension. But it didn’t work. Meanwhile, Erik was working hard in his tennis lessons, he had grown to be a very good and strong tennis player, one of the best in the nation. Other hobbies of his included theatre and he even won a “Best Actor” award, which is interesting to note with this case in particular.
August 20, 1980, 10:00 pm PST
Throughout the boys' lives, their parents were very hard on them. When they started taking interest in tennis, it was said that Kitty and Jose pushed them to be the best and nothing less. Because he was unable to attend an Ivy league college, Jose’s big goal for his boys was for them to attend Princeton University. He put them into prestigious schools in order for them to have the best education possible. But his determination for his sons to be perfect was often times seen as overbearing and abusive. He wanted his family to be the perfect American family. When he saw his kids imperfections, he made sure they would correct it. For example, Lyle was balding, and in an effort to cover it up, he wore a tupe. His father ridiculed him for this causing many years of insecurity. Erik, despite being the closest person to Lyle, had absolutely no idea about this until one day, Kitty and Lyle were fighting and at one point Lyle’s hair flew right off. Revelaing to his brother, his deep dark secret. From there, the boys got together. They compared notes about what happened to them, the money, and allegedly they discussed sexual abuse. In court, the boys claimed that this conversation lead to the murder of their parents.
On August 20, 1989, the events of the murder played out. What happened after was truly interesting. When officers were called they took a particularly long time to show up to the scene. However, when they did, they noted that the boys were in a state of deep despair. The boys seemed to be very, very sad. Erik was crying incredibly hard, stunned, he cried for his dead parents. The display was so moving to officers that they didn’t even check their hands for gunpowder residue which is standard in all murder cases that involve guns as the primary weapon. The boys were let go, where they would spend the next six months in freedom.
“No one ever came to rescue me, except my brother, Lyle.” -Erik Menendez
After Life
In the days after the murders, the boys spent copious amounts of their parents money. Jose Menendez was worth 14 million dollars with an additional 5 million dollars in life insurance money that would all go to Lyle and Erik. The boys ended up going to their parents funeral not long after the death. This event was said to be very confusing for friends and family. The boys came to the funeral, cracking jokes, smiling, laughing, decked out in expensive clothing and jewelry. This display was seen as very strange to many people and raised red flags for police. They didn’t seem like boys who just saw their parents dead body but rather two people with a motive: money.
Over the course of the next six months, investigators would work to figure out this incredibly gruesome case. They worked on possible leads. One being the possible mob association that Jose had. This lead was brought to police by the brothers. It was thought to be a valid claim due to the fact that Jose was known for shady business practices and connections to unlawful groups such as the mob. However, this theory was thrown out due to the fact that mob killings weren’t so bloody and they likely would’ve left Kitty alive. The next theory was that the boys killed their parents in an effort to gain riches. This theory was strengthened by the boy’s growing money spending that included: a restaurant, a Porche, a Jeep Wrangler, and new penthouses that were right next to each other.
This was enough suspicion for the police to have the boys arrested and tried for their parent's murder. In 1996, nearly a decade after their parent's death, the boys were found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
More on the trail in “Cold Hard Fact: The Menendez Trial”
