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It’s been more than 30 years since Lyle and Erik Menendez, better known as the murderous Menendez brothers, strolled into their opulent Beverly Hills home toting shotguns and viciously murdered their parents Jose and Mary Louise Menendez, then 45 and 47, respectively. Lyle was 21 and his brother Erik was 18 when they committed the heinous crime. But how were they caught? Did they confess?
Sort of.
The Menendez brothers murder trial is one of the highest-profile murder cases of the ’90s, save for the murder trial of O.J. Simpson. The story is once again in the cultural zeitgeist thanks to a new Netflix series called Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.
The show is the second in the Monster franchise, with the first being the super smash controversial; hit DAHMER — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, which racked up more than 1 billion viewing hours in just 60 days.
As detailed by the series, the brothers shot their father, a successful entertainment executive, six times before firing one final blow to the back of his head. The mom was shot no less than ten times. Because of the especially vicious nature of the crimes, police believed the murders may have been mafia-related.
The brothers played the part of the grieving sons perfectly, with Lyle calling 911 after the murders in hysterics saying the infamous line: “Someone killed my parents.” The brothers’ alibi was that they went to see Batman, and they had movie tickets to corroborate this, so the police bought the story at first. But then, the two started buying things, making big, expensive purchases that began to attract suspicion.
The brothers spent almost $1 million on cars, watches, and clothes and Lyle even bought a chain restaurant. Police tried to get the brothers’ friends to wear a wire to see if they could get a confession but to no avail. Things changed when police got a tip from a woman who was the mistress of Dr. Jerome Oziel, a psychologist the boys were seeing. They were arrested in 1990 after it was revealed that Dr. Oziel had recordings of a confession.
The tapes were allowed to be admitted to evidence because Erik threatened Dr. Oziel, which violated the doctor-patient privilege protecting private information between the two parties from being used in a trial.
In the tapes, which were played in court, we can hear Dr. Oziel talk about their father and how he was controlling and how, “isn’t that really after all, isn’t that what it was about, killing him?”
Erik responded:
“My father and my mother were…were two people that I loved and… I had no choice. I would have taken any other choice… uh, I much regret it. I may not have had a choice at the time, but I regret it now and I simply don’t like hearing my father put in this sort of way.”
Despite the confession, the first trial ended in a hung jury. But the prosecutors tried again and in the second trial, the brothers were very limited in being able to talk about how their parents supposedly abused them, and thus the jury could not consider manslaughter as a charge. This time, they were both convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.