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Speaker 4: Good Evening. Interest in the Menendez brothers case has exploded
Speaker 4: in the last few months, over seven hundred and seventy
Speaker 4: million views on TikTok. The groundswell began in twenty seventeen
Speaker 4: with the TV premiers of several documentary Freeze and NBC's
Speaker 4: eight episode limited series Law and Order True Crime, The
Speaker 4: Menendez Murders. Social media users were overwhelmingly sympathetic to the
Speaker 4: brothers during the NBC show, which debuted during the early
Speaker 4: days of the me Too and men Too era. Investigative
Speaker 4: journalists and author Robert Rand's twenty eighteen book The Menendez
Speaker 4: Murders provided the primary source material for NBC series plug
Speaker 4: streaming on Amazon YouTube and Google Play. The NBC series
Speaker 4: was one hundred and eighty degree flip from the general
Speaker 4: perception that the brothers were just greedy, rich kids who
Speaker 4: killed Bozzie and Harriet on a quiet Sunday night in
Speaker 4: Beverly Hills. There was little Internet or social media when
Speaker 4: the brothers went on trial in nineteen ninety three. Earlier
Speaker 4: this year, the current explosion of passionate Menendez advocates caught
Speaker 4: the attention of The New York Times with an article
Speaker 4: the New Menendez Defenders. Young people are making impassioned arguments
Speaker 4: for the release of Lyle and Eric Menendez. Why Now.
Speaker 4: On April TEWOD twenty twenty one, ABC's twenty twenty aired
Speaker 4: a two hour special about the international movement of new
Speaker 4: Menendez supporters. Robert Rand continues to actively repost on the case.
Speaker 4: Some of the research included in his book The Menendez
Speaker 4: Murders could become significant new evidence when the brothers file
Speaker 4: an appeal. New evidence has surfaced, leading to an appeal
Speaker 4: court filing later this year and a possible third trial
Speaker 4: for Lyle and Eric Menendez. The program this evening is
Speaker 4: the New Menendez Defenders, the international movement of supporters who
Speaker 4: want Lyle and Eric set free, with my special guest,
Speaker 4: journalist and author Robert Rand. Welcome back to the program,
Speaker 4: and thank you very much for this interview.
Speaker 5: Robert Rand, thanks for having me back then. I believe
Speaker 5: we last spoke about eighteen months ago.
Speaker 4: Yes, it's been quite a while and in a cedible
Speaker 4: amount of new information and progress in this case after
Speaker 4: thirty one years has occurred. Incredible. It seems hard to
Speaker 4: take us. Oh, go ahead.
Speaker 5: I was just going to say, this will sound hard
Speaker 5: to believe that I am still actively reporting a new
Speaker 5: information connected to the Menanda's brother's case. There are people
Speaker 5: that I've been trying to get to talk to me
Speaker 5: for twenty years, and some of them have actually come
Speaker 5: out of the woodwork in the last few months.
Speaker 4: Interesting, before we start all that new information that you did,
Speaker 4: we're privy to and do have that new information to
Speaker 4: share with their audience this evening. Tell us about your
Speaker 4: fourteen year old son and the information he imparted to you.
Speaker 5: One day, well, one day last fall in October twenty twenty,
Speaker 5: my fourteen year old son came to me one afternoon
Speaker 5: and said, Dad, you have to come take a look
Speaker 5: at TikTok. It's full of Menenda's brothers videos. And kind
Speaker 5: of was surprised. And you know, he was showing me
Speaker 5: his phone and the videos that I was seeing back
Speaker 5: last fall were kind of frivolous. There were a lot
Speaker 5: of young women that were lip syncing to the Britney
Speaker 5: Spears song I'm in Love with the Criminal, and they
Speaker 5: were cutting in video of Eric and Viiol Menendez when
Speaker 5: they were eighteen and twenty one at their first court
Speaker 5: appearance in March of nineteen ninety. Today, by the way,
Speaker 5: they are fifty three and fifty. But after the first
Speaker 5: few weeks of seeing some of those initial videos, I
Speaker 5: was following the posts on TikTok and Instagram, and I
Speaker 5: noticed that everything took a turn at some point in
Speaker 5: November twenty twenty and the videos started becoming more serious.
Speaker 5: People were starting to post about the issues. They were
Speaker 5: getting involved in the specific details of the case, a
Speaker 5: lot of minutia, and one of the ways that people
Speaker 5: can learn about the Menanda's case in twenty twenty is
Speaker 5: court TV. The old Court TV was rebooted a couple
Speaker 5: of years ago, and in June of twenty twenty, Court
Speaker 5: TV posted the entire six month long Menendez trial streaming
Speaker 5: on their website, and so you can actually watch every
Speaker 5: moment of the trial, including the evidence hearings, on Court TV.
Speaker 5: And so people were watching the court TV stream, they
Speaker 5: were also watching documentaries. And as I saw this movement
Speaker 5: start to grow, I started picking up a lot of
Speaker 5: followers on social media. I started interacting with people who
Speaker 5: were not just in the States, but were all over
Speaker 5: the world. And there is a group of people that
Speaker 5: have become thousands of accounts on social media and people
Speaker 5: all over the world that they want to see the
Speaker 5: Menenda's brothers have their case review, They would like to
Speaker 5: see them be granted a new trial, and they would
Speaker 5: like to see them be released from state prison after
Speaker 5: thirty one years in custody.
Speaker 4: Now you say the perception has changed, I've read an
Speaker 4: introduction that these guys were just greedy, rich kids that
Speaker 4: killed Ozzie and Harriet in Beverly Hills. So what are
Speaker 4: the issues that this new movement seems to identify and
Speaker 4: are concerned with and think that there are issues that
Speaker 4: are deserving of Lyle and Eric to have a new trial.
Speaker 5: I think the biggest issue is that society has changed
Speaker 5: so much from July of nineteen ninety three when the
Speaker 5: Menendez brothers went on trial in their first of two trials.
Speaker 5: And as you said in your intro, in the fall
Speaker 5: of twenty seventeen, the New York Times published their first
Speaker 5: me too and men to hashtag stories. And actually, the
Speaker 5: interesting thing that happened was the NBC Law and Order
Speaker 5: to Prime the Menendos Murder series premier the last week
Speaker 5: in September and on October fifth, the New York Times
Speaker 5: ran their first story about Hartu and Mentu stories. And
Speaker 5: so I was following social media during the NBC series,
Speaker 5: and I was surprised. I was expecting to see a
Speaker 5: lot of the nineteen nineties haters come out of the woodwork.
Speaker 5: The people that you know, branded them greedy rich kids.
Speaker 5: You know, they were following the stories that were being
Speaker 5: you know, it was really the way the mainstream media
Speaker 5: was presenting the case as a pair of greedy rich kids,
Speaker 5: and so it was interesting to see that there was
Speaker 5: there was a new younger generation that wasn't even born
Speaker 5: during the first trial that had a new take on
Speaker 5: the story. And one of the things that I found
Speaker 5: it interesting about that was that people were re examining
Speaker 5: this case in light of the changes that we've had
Speaker 5: in society since nineteen ninety three. And I believe that
Speaker 5: the Menndez brothers trial health today, or if they were
Speaker 5: granted the new trial, there would be a completely different outcome.
Speaker 5: The resolution of this case should have been manslaughter, not murder,
Speaker 5: which still would have sent them to prison for twenty
Speaker 5: two years, and now they've been in jail for thirty
Speaker 5: one years.
Speaker 4: You talk about just while we're at that right there,
Speaker 4: you talk about that the original jurors, you say, several
Speaker 4: of those jurors had said that the issue of the
Speaker 4: familiar familial abuse, the father's abuse on Eric and Lyle,
Speaker 4: came out and was allowed at the mitigating at the
Speaker 4: penalty a pardon me this sentencing phase, and it as
Speaker 4: a mitigating circumstance. They got to hear that, and the
Speaker 4: jurors as a result said, what what did you say that?
Speaker 4: Several of the jurors said, once they knew that information, well, let.
Speaker 5: Me back up for a moment and just explain. In
Speaker 5: the first Menendous trial, the defense was allowed to put
Speaker 5: on sixty five witnesses, teachers, coaches, family members, friends who
Speaker 5: told the detailed history of the Menendez family. In the
Speaker 5: second trial, Judge Stanley Weisberg reversed most of his evidence
Speaker 5: rulings and he did not allow the defense to put
Speaker 5: on that information and those witnesses in the guilt phase.
Speaker 5: And in a final death blow to the defense in
Speaker 5: the closing days of the second trial, he ruled that
Speaker 5: the defense would not be allowed to argue in perfect
Speaker 5: self defense, which had been the heart of their case,
Speaker 5: and the heart of their closing arguments in the first trial.
Speaker 5: So the brothers were convicted by a jury in the
Speaker 5: second trial that heard a completely different set of evidence
Speaker 5: from the jurors in the first trial. In the first trial,
Speaker 5: half of the jurors there were two juries, one for
Speaker 5: each brother. Half of the jurors voted for manslaughter. In
Speaker 5: the second trial, jurors heard a different set of evidence.
Speaker 5: They voted for a first degree murder conviction in March
Speaker 5: nineteen ninety six. And following that conviction there was the
Speaker 5: phase in which the jurors had two choices, either to
Speaker 5: sentence the brothers to life without the role or sentence
Speaker 5: them to the gas chamber in California. And so in
Speaker 5: the pedalty phase, the defense was allowed to put out
Speaker 5: all of those witnesses in the family history that have
Speaker 5: been the heart of their main case in the first
Speaker 5: menendous trial. And after the penalty phase was over and
Speaker 5: jurors voted for life without the role, I interviewed a
Speaker 5: number of the jurors and several of them told me
Speaker 5: if they had heard that evidence about the family history
Speaker 5: in the guild phase, they would not have voted for
Speaker 5: first degree murder.
Speaker 4: Certainly now you provide what you call scoops. And so
Speaker 4: in your book chapter sixty, you talk about a person
Speaker 4: named a cousin of Eric Menandez Andy Cannell. But tell
Speaker 4: us a little bit about Andy Cannell's mother, Marta and
Speaker 4: your discovery once you spoke to her.
Speaker 5: Sure well, Andy Cano was a key defense witness in
Speaker 5: both trials when he was ten years old and Eric
Speaker 5: was twelve, and Eric had a conversation with it one
Speaker 5: day in which he asked him if his father ever
Speaker 5: massaged him in his genitals, and Andy Canna was kind
Speaker 5: of shocked and asked a few more questions. And when
Speaker 5: he heard the information, ten year old Andy Cano wanted
Speaker 5: to run and tell his mother, and Eric Menendez stopped
Speaker 5: him and said, no, you can't ever tell anybody about this,
Speaker 5: and he made Andy's Eric made Andy square on a
Speaker 5: pinky promise that he would never say anything to anybody
Speaker 5: about the molestation that was going on in Menanza's family,
Speaker 5: and the two cousins had a very close relationship. And
Speaker 5: in March of twenty eighteen, when I was on the
Speaker 5: deadline for my Menenda's book, The Menendez Murders, I was
Speaker 5: visiting the brother's aunt Marchakano at her home in Florida,
Speaker 5: and she allowed me to go through some papers, some
Speaker 5: boxes of papers of her son. Andy Cano, tragically passed
Speaker 5: away in two thousand and three from an accidental overdose
Speaker 5: of sleeping bills. He was very traumatized by the whole
Speaker 5: experience of seeing his cousin. He was very close to
Speaker 5: go through this trial, testifying in both trials, and Andy
Speaker 5: Cano was going through some troubles of his own, and
Speaker 5: so in March or twenty eighteen, March Cano pulled down
Speaker 5: some boxes from the attic of her house, and within
Speaker 5: fifteen minutes after I began going through Andy Cano's I
Speaker 5: found a letter that Eric Menendez had written to Andy
Speaker 5: Cano in December of nineteen eighty eight, nine months before
Speaker 5: the murders, in which Eric Menendez was complaining about the
Speaker 5: ongoing abuse by his father. And Eric Menendez was seventeen
Speaker 5: years old.
Speaker 4: At the time. Why do you think this is? I
Speaker 4: know this at a different time and we have a
Speaker 4: different mentality and sensibility. But how important is that evidence
Speaker 4: and what does it say compared to the other evidence
Speaker 4: that the defense had at some point, or at least
Speaker 4: they mentioned in the penalty phase of the second trial.
Speaker 4: So why is this so crucial information and evidence in
Speaker 4: your mind?
Speaker 5: Well, first, the Eric Menendez letter to Andy Cano that
Speaker 5: never came into either trial. That was never that never
Speaker 5: appeared in any evidence hearing. Nobody knew it existed until
Speaker 5: I founded it in the attic of Eric Mark Cano.
Speaker 5: So that is a brand new piece of evidence. There
Speaker 5: is additional evidence that I've been going through the hundreds
Speaker 5: of audio taped interviews that I've conduct. I've covered this
Speaker 5: case since August twenty first, nineteen eighty nine, less than
Speaker 5: twelve hours after the Menendez murders in Beverly Hills, and
Speaker 5: by audiotape. Interviews begin with Eric and Lyle Menendez in
Speaker 5: October of nineteen eighty nine, two months after the murders,
Speaker 5: five months before they were arrested, and the brothers were
Speaker 5: not suspect publicly, I had no reason to be suspicious
Speaker 5: to them, and they spent we spent three days talking together,
Speaker 5: and they told me how much they'd loved their parents
Speaker 5: and how close knit the family was. And so I'm
Speaker 5: now going through these audio tapes, and I never had
Speaker 5: the time because I was actively involved in the coverage
Speaker 5: of the trial. I never had the time to transcribe things,
Speaker 5: and so I had a lot of interviews that I
Speaker 5: had recorded. For example, I might have a nineteen nineties
Speaker 5: audio set forty five minutes on each side with maybe
Speaker 5: six or eight different people of that tape, and I
Speaker 5: had the names of the people on the tape, but
Speaker 5: I didn't have the content transcribed. What I have found
Speaker 5: in the last year is information from friends of Lyle
Speaker 5: Menendez who knew about the molestation that was going on
Speaker 5: in the Menenda's family four or five months before the murders,
Speaker 5: and those are witnesses information that never appeared in either trial.
Speaker 4: You also spoke to Marta, which was Jose's sister, and
Speaker 4: there's some disturbing information you got about his background or
Speaker 4: their background growing up.
Speaker 5: That's right about ten or twelve years ago. Marzicano Marxicano,
Speaker 5: was my original entry into the Menanda's family. I met
Speaker 5: her a couple of weeks after the murders when I
Speaker 5: was working for the Miami Herald, and my original assignment
Speaker 5: for the Miami Herald Sunday magazine in nineteen eighty nine
Speaker 5: was to write a biography about Jose Menendez, Cuban American
Speaker 5: rights and richest story as in a terrible tragedy, because
Speaker 5: the murders were in August of eighty nine, but the
Speaker 5: brothers were not arrested until March of nineteen ninety. So
Speaker 5: I was working on this biography of Jose Menendez, and
Speaker 5: as I said, the brothers were not suspects publicly, I
Speaker 5: had no reason to be suspicious to them. So I
Speaker 5: have known mart Cano since September of nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 5: and about ten or twelve years ago, she made a
Speaker 5: cryptic comment to me in which she said, after my
Speaker 5: mother passes away, I'm going to reveal some information to you.
Speaker 5: And fast forward to the spring of twenty eighteen when
Speaker 5: Marchicano sat down with me one day and told me
Speaker 5: that her mother had been sexually molesting Jose Menendez, her brother,
Speaker 5: between the ages of about four and seven years old.
Speaker 5: And this was shocking information to me, again something that
Speaker 5: had never come into either trial. And right around that
Speaker 5: same time, I was able to confirm with Kitty Menendez's
Speaker 5: sister that Kit Menendez had been sexually molested by an
Speaker 5: older family member when she was a little girl. So
Speaker 5: this was These were two significant pieces of information I've
Speaker 5: learned through research that about one third of abuse victims
Speaker 5: grow up and abuse children when when they are adults.
Speaker 5: Of course, that means you know, two thirds do not.
Speaker 5: But this was new information that had never come in
Speaker 5: to eat a trial. And I think what the most
Speaker 5: important one line summary I can tell people about Menenda's
Speaker 5: case is this is a story of intergenerational sexual abuse
Speaker 5: and mental illness. And the way people approach the Menenda's case,
Speaker 5: journalists that are covering it is they try to take
Speaker 5: this you know, square peg and put it in a
Speaker 5: round hole and say, you know, and try to try
Speaker 5: to present it as a tradition true crime story. And
Speaker 5: this is not a traditional true crime story. The Menendaz
Speaker 5: the real Menendez family saga is this family background and
Speaker 5: what happened in this family that had trouble going back generations,
Speaker 5: including the brother's grandmother who molested Jose Menendez. She was
Speaker 5: grew up in a household in a small town in
Speaker 5: Cuba called Artemista, with five older brothers and a couple uncles,
Speaker 5: and she was sexually molested when she was a little girl.
Speaker 5: So this is a typical situation that I've learned about
Speaker 5: in my research about the abuse and molestation where the
Speaker 5: abuse jumps from generation to generation.
Speaker 4: You talk about also, I know I'm changing subjects a
Speaker 4: little bit, but the incredible story of doctor jerome o'zell.
Speaker 4: Is there any I know you don't mention it per se,
Speaker 4: but is there any issue you have with this evidence,
Speaker 4: this confident usually what would be considered confidential information between
Speaker 4: a patient and client coming out in the way that
Speaker 4: it did, this information being an admissible at court? Is
Speaker 4: do you have any issue with that ruling? And do
Speaker 4: you think anyone else will if there's a potential third trial.
Speaker 5: Well, the story of doctor Jeromo Ziel and his mistress,
Speaker 5: Judelan Smith could be a book in itself. Doctor Lezill
Speaker 5: was the therapist that Eric Menendez met in the fall
Speaker 5: of nineteen eighty eight when both of the Menanda's brothers
Speaker 5: were involved in some burglaries in Calabasa's suburb of Los Angeles,
Speaker 5: and Eric Menendez was arrested and had a case that
Speaker 5: was in juvenile court in La County, and as part
Speaker 5: of the resolution of that case now court judge ordered
Speaker 5: that he undergo an evaluation by a therapist, and Kiddy
Speaker 5: Menendez has actually seen two different therapists on her own
Speaker 5: at that time, and one of them referred her to
Speaker 5: doctor Jeromosil and Beverly Hills psychologist. And oddly, doctor Roseil
Speaker 5: specialty was sexual therapy for couples, but he was just
Speaker 5: hired by the Menendez family to do an evaluation of
Speaker 5: Eric and so then and then Eric did have some
Speaker 5: additional therapy sessions with doctor Roziel after initially meeting him
Speaker 5: in the spring of nineteen eighty nine. And that's information
Speaker 5: that has never come out actually in any meeting. So
Speaker 5: doctor rose so in pass forward to So the murders
Speaker 5: are August of nineteen eighty nine, and I spent three
Speaker 5: days talking to Eric and Loo Menendez on the weekend
Speaker 5: of October twentieth, nineteen eighty nine, and this was always
Speaker 5: interesting to me. On Halloween eight nine, about eleven days
Speaker 5: after I met with the brothers, Eric Menendez called doctor Rozil,
Speaker 5: the only therapist he had never known, and said that
Speaker 5: he was very troubled and that he needed to meet
Speaker 5: with him. And I'm Halloween. Eric Menendez confessed to doctor
Speaker 5: Rozield that the Menanda's brothers were responsible for killing their parents.
Speaker 5: Doctor Rozil, you know, within a few minutes, said Eric,
Speaker 5: you need to call your brother and I want him
Speaker 5: to come to the office right away. And it was Halloween.
Speaker 5: Lyle Menendez was at the Menenda's mansion passing out candy
Speaker 5: to kids with his girlfriend and he raced over to
Speaker 5: doctor Roziel's office and he was very upset when he
Speaker 5: found out brother had confessed to doctor Roziel. And the
Speaker 5: brothers met with doctor Roziel for about an hour, and
Speaker 5: Lyle Menendas became frustrated and grabbed Eric and said, I
Speaker 5: don't want to continue talking to him. Let's leave, and
Speaker 5: doctor Roziel followed the brothers out into the hallway and
Speaker 5: at the elevator. Doctor rosial testified during the first Menendez
Speaker 5: trial that Lyle Menendez turned Doctor rozial was trying to
Speaker 5: get the brothers to come back and continue the therapy session,
Speaker 5: and Lyl Menne said, nope, I'm out of here, and
Speaker 5: according to doctor Roziale's testimony, Lyle Manendez turned to him
Speaker 5: and shook his hand and said good luck, Doctor Roseiel,
Speaker 5: and then the brothers left, and in his testimony, doctor
Speaker 5: roseieal claimed that he interpreted that handshake in that phrase
Speaker 5: good luck, doctor Roziel as a threat from lyle Manettes. Normally,
Speaker 5: you have a privilege with a therapist in California like
Speaker 5: every other state in which you know, anything that you
Speaker 5: discussed with your therapist is privileged and confidential. But there
Speaker 5: is an exception in California called the pterosoft rule, which
Speaker 5: is if you threaten your therapist, or for example, if
Speaker 5: you tell your therapist, I'm going to go kill my
Speaker 5: girlfriend tomorrow, the therapist is obligated to break the privilege
Speaker 5: and contact law enforcement in that specific situation, or in
Speaker 5: the situation of if you threaten your therapist, the therapist
Speaker 5: is allowed to break the confidentiality and tell people around
Speaker 5: him in order to protect them, in order to keep
Speaker 5: them safe. And so doctor Ozel's story is that he
Speaker 5: was threatened by Lyle Menandez and that he had to
Speaker 5: tell his wife, his mistress, He had a whole circle
Speaker 5: of people that he told about the brother's confession. And
Speaker 5: then the brothers continued having therapy sessions with doctor Ozel,
Speaker 5: and in the subsequent sessions that took place in November
Speaker 5: of nineteen eighty nine, the power balance and the relationship
Speaker 5: kind of shifted, and doctor Ozeal kind of felt like
Speaker 5: he was in control of things, and according to accusations
Speaker 5: the defense made during the first Menendez trial, doctor Ozel
Speaker 5: was blackmailing the Menandos brothers, and the evidence of that,
Speaker 5: according to the family and the defense, is that he
Speaker 5: told the brothers that he was going to schedule therapy
Speaker 5: sessions for them five days a week, one session for
Speaker 5: each brother and according to the defense evidence, the brothers
Speaker 5: never went to any of those therapy sessions, but he
Speaker 5: was billing the family in Doctor Roziel, according to the
Speaker 5: brothers and the family made it clear that I don't
Speaker 5: care if you ever show up for these therapy sessions.
Speaker 5: I'm billing your family. And so the family members started
Speaker 5: getting these large bills eight thousand dollars, ten thousand dollars,
Speaker 5: twelve thousand dollars, and they were asking the brothers what's
Speaker 5: going on, and the brothers said, no, Aunt Mark said,
Speaker 5: these therapy sessions are important. We want to continue seeing
Speaker 5: doctor Oziel. So that's one of a series of strange
Speaker 5: facts in doctor Roziel's background. And then in December of
Speaker 5: nineteen eighty nine, in another twist in this case that
Speaker 5: you couldn't make up if you were writing a fiction
Speaker 5: novel or a movie, the Menenda's brothers had contacted a
Speaker 5: high profile criminal defense attorney the name of Gerald Chaloff
Speaker 5: in Los Angeles. Joe Chaliff represented the Hillside strangler in
Speaker 5: one of LA's numerous high profile cases. And Gerald Chaliff
Speaker 5: and doctor Rozel had a meeting one afternoon in which
Speaker 5: they decided that they were going to record an audio
Speaker 5: tape of a therapy session with the Menanda's brothers. And
Speaker 5: I'm going to put air quotes around recession because Gerald
Speaker 5: Chaliff and doctor Rozel met for an hour and kind
Speaker 5: of went over basically kind of outlined the script of
Speaker 5: what was going to happen in this recording, and then
Speaker 5: Gerald Chaloff left the office. Doctor Rozel turned on the
Speaker 5: tape recorder and he recorded a one hour audio tape
Speaker 5: that included the Menanda's brothers admitted they were responsible for
Speaker 5: killing their parents, and that tape would normally have been
Speaker 5: privileged under California's therapy laws. But this was an issue
Speaker 5: that delayed the trial for three years between the arrest
Speaker 5: in March of ninety and the trial that began in
Speaker 5: July of ninety three, and the issue of the privilege
Speaker 5: went all the way to the California Supreme Court, and
Speaker 5: the California Supreme Court ruled that the tape could be
Speaker 5: allowed as evidence because of what doctor rozeal claimed was
Speaker 5: a threat that's been made by the Menanda's brothers. But
Speaker 5: it would have been a really interesting case. It kind
Speaker 5: of would have been the Emperor's new close if the
Speaker 5: if the Supreme Court had ruled against allowing that cape
Speaker 5: as evidence, the Menenda's defense would have been, you say,
Speaker 5: we killed our parents, prove it.
Speaker 4: It's interesting too that there was at least some deception,
Speaker 4: I have to say, the least of outright lying by
Speaker 4: doctor Rozille's mistress, which becomes muddies this water completely because
Speaker 4: she's certainly moves in with he and his wife. And
Speaker 4: then she is the person that calls police saying that
Speaker 4: she actually heard the confessions either through the wall or
Speaker 4: through the door, and you investigated that claim. That would
Speaker 4: have been one of their witnesses.
Speaker 5: And again, doctor rozil was the star prosecution witness in
Speaker 5: the first Menendez trial. But as I said a moment ago,
Speaker 5: you could write a book about the relationship between doctor
Speaker 5: Roziale and his mistress. And again it's details that you
Speaker 5: can't imagine making up Jude laun Smith, doctor Roziel's paramore,
Speaker 5: claimed that she was in the waiting room of doctor
Speaker 5: Rozil's office on the day that Eric Menendez confessed, and
Speaker 5: she said that she overheard things from the waiting room,
Speaker 5: from the therapy room to the waiting room. And I
Speaker 5: interviewed doctor Rozil in late nineteen ninety and early nineteen
Speaker 5: ninety one for a very long article I wrote for
Speaker 5: the playboyd magazine that came out in March of ninety one,
Speaker 5: and one of the first When doctor Rozilla agreed to
Speaker 5: do an interview with me, the first thing I said
Speaker 5: to him was, I want to come over to your
Speaker 5: office with a couple of friends, and I want to
Speaker 5: do a sound check, and I want to find out
Speaker 5: if you can hear anything from the therapy room, which
Speaker 5: was way down at the end of the long hallway
Speaker 5: and the waiting room. And he immediately said yes. And
Speaker 5: I knew at that moment I didn't really have to
Speaker 5: do that test because I knew she was lying. I
Speaker 5: knew she made up that story. But I went ahead
Speaker 5: and went over to the office with two friends and
Speaker 5: we spent an hour, you know, trying to do you know,
Speaker 5: various versions, you know, with the door closed, the door
Speaker 5: opened a crack, you know, with different people in the
Speaker 5: waiting room, and we couldn't hear a thing, and so
Speaker 5: I realized. My conclusion was that doctor Rozild Gothip with
Speaker 5: his girlfriends, and I believe he was trying to save
Speaker 5: his career, and the story that he came up with,
Speaker 5: or they came up with, you know, I'm still not
Speaker 5: sure of the exact and details. It's still murphy, but
Speaker 5: I believe the story that they came up with was
Speaker 5: that she was going to say that she overhearthed the confession.
Speaker 5: And then in an even stranger twist, doctor Rozel me
Speaker 5: moves Judelon Smith, his mistress, into his house with his
Speaker 5: wife and his two young daughters who were eight and
Speaker 5: ten years old, and he is basically trying to keep
Speaker 5: the lid on Judelan Smith because their relationship was going sour,
Speaker 5: and so she was threatening to go to the police
Speaker 5: and tell the police that the Menanda's brothers killed the parents,
Speaker 5: and doctor Jerome Zil has an audiotape with their confession,
Speaker 5: and doctor Rozel was married to a therapist and yet
Speaker 5: his wife allowed, you know, Judelan Smith to, you know,
Speaker 5: move into their home and things kept spitting out of
Speaker 5: control for several months. And so, while according to the defense,
Speaker 5: doctor Rozel is blackmailing the Menendez brothers, he has his
Speaker 5: own drama, going out at home with his girlfriend, living
Speaker 5: in the house with his wife two young daughters. And finally,
Speaker 5: doctor Rozelle and his wife Lauel kickedju laund Smith out
Speaker 5: of their home the first week in March of nineteen
Speaker 5: ninety and a couple days later she went to the
Speaker 5: La County DA's office and the Beverly Hills Police and
Speaker 5: said Eric and Lyle Menendez killed their parents, and doctor
Speaker 5: jerom Oziel has an audio tape in a safety box
Speaker 5: of their confession, and that's how the brothers were arrested
Speaker 5: because of doctor Rozel's mistress revealing this information. And again,
Speaker 5: these are twists that you just can't imagine making up
Speaker 5: if you're writing a fictional murder story.
Speaker 4: No, certainly, let's use this opportunity, Robert, to stop for
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Speaker 4: Now, we talked about that these confessions, normally they would
Speaker 4: have been on these audio tapes without the lies and
Speaker 4: the call from this Judelana of smythe then this information
Speaker 4: would yeah, I would not have come to the attention
Speaker 4: of the police. You talked about another information, Yeah.
Speaker 5: Well, I was just going to say. The interesting thing
Speaker 5: was if Beverly Hills Police had been investigating the menendous
Speaker 5: murder case for seven months and at a certain point
Speaker 5: the I was aware that the investigation was focused solely
Speaker 5: on the brothers, but the reality was the Beverly Hills
Speaker 5: police really did not have much evidence. They knew the
Speaker 5: brothers were spending a lot of money that became a
Speaker 5: big issue in the media, but they really didn't have
Speaker 5: hard evidence to make an arrest. And if I can interject,
Speaker 5: one factoid here, a very important factoid about the Menanda's case.
Speaker 5: The mainstream media, from the moment the brothers were arrested
Speaker 5: through both of their trials, kept repeating this information that
Speaker 5: they were greedy, rich kids that were in a hurry
Speaker 5: to inherit their parents' fourteen million dollar estate. And the
Speaker 5: reality was that in August in nineteen ninety two, the
Speaker 5: La County DA's office went to a grand jury and
Speaker 5: presented evidence of murder for financial gain, and the grand
Speaker 5: jury did not return an indictment on those charges. So,
Speaker 5: in spite of not having an indictment on murder for
Speaker 5: financial gain, the prosecution, the l County DA's office as
Speaker 5: a dozen people, the two public relations and their job
Speaker 5: is to have been on these high profile cases and
Speaker 5: in my opinion, poisoning the potential jury pool. And so
Speaker 5: in spite of not having an indictment, they kept pushing
Speaker 5: this greedy rich kids, greedy rich kids. And that was
Speaker 5: You know, if you went up to anybody on the
Speaker 5: street in nineteen ninety three, at the time of the
Speaker 5: first trial and said who are the Menendez brothers, they
Speaker 5: would probably reply, oh, there's greedy rich kids that killed
Speaker 5: their parents.
Speaker 4: You write that in chapter fifty six. With the second trial,
Speaker 4: you talk about also that the public was misled by
Speaker 4: the media. The jurors actually believed that these people would
Speaker 4: go free. So when we talked about that, these jurors,
Speaker 4: if they would have heard that other information about the
Speaker 4: family abuse, would have voted differently. But also was there
Speaker 4: that much pressure from the media that even the jurors
Speaker 4: believed that these people if they didn't vote the right way,
Speaker 4: if they didn't judge the right way, these people would
Speaker 4: be sent free.
Speaker 5: These two brothers, as I said, as I mentioned before,
Speaker 5: in the first Menendez trial, half of the juries, half
Speaker 5: of the jurors there were two juries, one for each
Speaker 5: brother because some of evidence only pertained to one or
Speaker 5: the other, and half of those jurors in the first
Speaker 5: trial voted for manslaughter. For some reason, the general public,
Speaker 5: because of being confused by stories in the mainstream media,
Speaker 5: the general public thought those jurors voting for manslaughter wanted
Speaker 5: to let the brothers walk out of jail and be acquitted,
Speaker 5: and nobody on either juror wanted to acquit the brothers.
Speaker 5: A manslaughter conviction would have sent the brothers to jail
Speaker 5: for twenty two years eleven years on each count, and
Speaker 5: so that was one major point of confusion in the
Speaker 5: public's interpretation of the case. Nobody wanted to let the
Speaker 5: brothers out of jail, but the manslaughter jurors were, you know,
Speaker 5: really took a beating on talk radio in Los Angeles
Speaker 5: after the first trial. People were outraged. They were going
Speaker 5: on talk radio and screaming, what's wrong with those stupid jurors.
Speaker 5: The brothers admitted they killed their parents, why couldn't they
Speaker 5: convict them of murder? And there was a radio station
Speaker 5: in LA KFI radio a show called John and Ken
Speaker 5: host a long time popular show in LA, hosts by
Speaker 5: a couple of conservative talk show hosts, and they were
Speaker 5: almost daily bashing the Menendez brothers and would have a
Speaker 5: segment about the case between five and six pm. It
Speaker 5: just happened to be the time of day when the
Speaker 5: jurors were driving home from the trial, and a lot
Speaker 5: of people in LA listened to this radio talk show.
Speaker 5: And in fact, in the spring of nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 5: after the first trial, the Menendaz family was out of money,
Speaker 5: and Leslie Abrams said, the lead attorney with the blonde,
Speaker 5: curly hair, that many people were familiar with, was trying
Speaker 5: to get court appointed. She eventually was court appointed at
Speaker 5: one hundred and twenty five dollars an hour, and she
Speaker 5: talked about that she was going to start raising money
Speaker 5: for a Menendez defense fund. John Cosco on KFI Radio
Speaker 5: in LA. They came on one day and said, we're
Speaker 5: going to have a fundraiser for the La County DA's
Speaker 5: office and the title of our fundraiser is Fried the
Speaker 5: Menendi And they actually staged an event and had their
Speaker 5: live radio show the three or four thousand people that
Speaker 5: are parking downtown in LA, in which people were making
Speaker 5: contributions to the La County DA's office against so many details.
Speaker 4: You write that when this was appealed, that the judge
Speaker 4: presiding over that appeal made a comment, but that you
Speaker 4: write about that O. J. Simpson and the Rodney King
Speaker 4: decision made the LA County District Attorney's office very very
Speaker 4: anxious about this case and very very anxious to have
Speaker 4: a win. Can you discuss that a bit.
Speaker 5: That's right, Dan, I mean, the politics in Los Angeles
Speaker 5: were very much had a major impact on the Benetta's
Speaker 5: brothers case, unfortunately for them. And this goes back to
Speaker 5: in the late eighties, there was a case called the
Speaker 5: mcmuntain Preschool trial, a sexual molestation case that was a
Speaker 5: very high profile media case in Los Angeles, which you know,
Speaker 5: was portrayed by the DA's offices that a family that
Speaker 5: owned the preschool had been molesting children for years, and
Speaker 5: the media grabbed out of the story, very big story
Speaker 5: in LA. And that case ended with the acquittal of
Speaker 5: all the defendants, So there's big loss number one. Then
Speaker 5: we had the Rodney King beating trial, the famous videotape
Speaker 5: of the beating of Rodney King by LAPD officers, and
Speaker 5: four LAPD officers went on trial, and that trial ended
Speaker 5: with an acquittal of all four officers, and that verdict
Speaker 5: set off riot in LA that went on for ten
Speaker 5: days and killed dozens of people and resulted in millions
Speaker 5: of dollars of damage to businesses in southern California. And
Speaker 5: then and then comes along a couple of years after
Speaker 5: the Rodney King trial comes the first Nomendo's case. It
Speaker 5: ends with neither jury could reach a verdict, so it
Speaker 5: ends with two mistrials. The public is outrage. And then
Speaker 5: in June of nineteen ninety four, we have the O. J.
Speaker 5: Simpson murders, the murder of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman,
Speaker 5: and the OJ Simpson trial took place in nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 5: and the OJ verdict was on October third, nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 5: and the second Menendez trial had the misfortune of starting
Speaker 5: the day after the OJ verdict. So at this point
Speaker 5: in the La County DA's office, they were desperate for
Speaker 5: a win. They were going to do whatever it took
Speaker 5: to convict the Menenda's brothers. And so it's really kind
Speaker 5: of a series of it was. It was just bad
Speaker 5: timing that they followed all of these glosses and the
Speaker 5: DA's office was so focused that they were going to
Speaker 5: convict the Menenda's brothers. And as you mentioned, when the
Speaker 5: Menenda's brothers had their last appeal in the in front
Speaker 5: of the Ninth Circuit in two thousand and five, and
Speaker 5: Justice Alex Kazinski actually made a statement during their appeal
Speaker 5: hearing in which he said he believed there had been
Speaker 5: collusion between the La County DA's office and the trial
Speaker 5: judge Stanley Weisberg to convict the Menendez brothers. And there's
Speaker 5: actually an audio tape you can you can search and
Speaker 5: find on the internet and hear that, you know, actually
Speaker 5: hear the hearing. But in spite of making that statement,
Speaker 5: Justice Kazinski voted against the appeal. But it's a very
Speaker 5: interesting statement that you made.
Speaker 4: You talk about the information and the new information and
Speaker 4: new evidence that's going to get these brothers to file
Speaker 4: appeals you know this later this year. You talk about
Speaker 4: that information, MM, talk about that the new evidence that
Speaker 4: you believe will compel this appeal court. First, but also
Speaker 4: why that information? Pardon me that? Yeah? That why that
Speaker 4: evidence will you think will succeed?
Speaker 5: Well, it's that That's several questions and lung So let
Speaker 5: me break it down. The first basic piece of information
Speaker 5: is that the menentous brothers have exhausted all of their
Speaker 5: state and federal appeals. They have no appeals left. They
Speaker 5: have three options that are on the table, three different
Speaker 5: legal avenues they can take to try and reopen their case.
Speaker 5: The two of those options are they could file, you know,
Speaker 5: request a pardon from Gavitt Newsom, the governor of California.
Speaker 5: They could also make a separate filing requesting clemency from
Speaker 5: the governor of California. I'm gonna take a while, guests
Speaker 5: and say Uh, it's probably that's that's probably pretty unlikely
Speaker 5: that that would ever happen. I would refer people to
Speaker 5: the situation with Leslie van Houten, one of the Manson
Speaker 5: family members who actually has been granted a release, parole
Speaker 5: and a release three or four times over the last
Speaker 5: five years by the California Parole Board. And each time
Speaker 5: that the Parole Board said she could be released, Governor
Speaker 5: Jerry Brown blocked her release the first time, and Gavin
Speaker 5: Newsom has blocked her release two additional times. And and
Speaker 5: so Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom, you know, traditionally liberal governors,
Speaker 5: politically liberal people, and they've watched her release. And Leslie
Speaker 5: van Houghton is seventy years old. She was twenty years old,
Speaker 5: and she was involved in the Manson murders. And my
Speaker 5: friend Linda Deutsch, the famous ap trial correspondent, wrote, I
Speaker 5: wrote a really powerful off at a few years ago
Speaker 5: that appeared in the La Times that people can search
Speaker 5: and read it. And Linda Deutsch actually has been in
Speaker 5: contact with Leslie van Houghton over the last ten years.
Speaker 5: And Linda Deutsch's appoint YEW was with it. You know,
Speaker 5: Leslie van Houton should be released.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: I mean, if the purpose of prisoners is to rehabilitate people,
Speaker 5: Leslie van Houghton is certainly an example of that. Fifty
Speaker 5: years after a crime she committed when she was twenty
Speaker 5: years old and high undrugged. You know, you know, are
Speaker 5: we ever going to show some compassion for Leslie van Houghton?
Speaker 5: And the answer is probably not, because she was a
Speaker 5: member of the notorious Manson family and people, and no
Speaker 5: governor of California, regardless of their politics, he's probably ever
Speaker 5: going to release the member of the Manson family, and
Speaker 5: so the Menendouz brothers. That's why filing for a partner,
Speaker 5: filing for a clemency is probably a real long shot.
Speaker 5: So the third avenue and what they are likely to
Speaker 5: do is they will file what's called a habeas corpus petition,
Speaker 5: and that is going to the appeal court and saying
Speaker 5: there is new evidence that we have since the trials
Speaker 5: that we'd like the appeal court to consider. And also
Speaker 5: you know that they have a major legal issue, which
Speaker 5: is that they were not allowed to present all of
Speaker 5: their evidence of being abused in the second trial where
Speaker 5: they were convicted. And there are two other factors in California.
Speaker 5: In twenty fifteen, California passed new youth offender laws that
Speaker 5: were based on new medical research that set of brain
Speaker 5: is not fully developed until the age of twenty five. California,
Speaker 5: any defendant who was under twenty five at the time
Speaker 5: of their crime is allowed to apply for a review
Speaker 5: of their case based on those laws. But there's one
Speaker 5: exception to that twenty fifteen law, and that is if
Speaker 5: you were sentenced to life without parole, you're not eligible
Speaker 5: to apply for that review. And to me, that makes
Speaker 5: no sense at all. Either everybody under twenty five gets
Speaker 5: to apply for a review, or you know, what's the
Speaker 5: point of the law. And then there's another California law
Speaker 5: that was passing, i think twenty seventeen or twenty eighteen,
Speaker 5: dealing with if you were not allowed to present evidence
Speaker 5: of abuse at your trial, that you have another avenue
Speaker 5: to ask for a review of your case. But what
Speaker 5: I believe what's going to happen is that the brothers
Speaker 5: will file a habeas corpus petition based on new evidence,
Speaker 5: some of which I had in my books, some of
Speaker 5: which I've discovered in left ear and reporting, and also
Speaker 5: the legal issues that the tag were not allowed to
Speaker 5: put on their full defense in their second trial where
Speaker 5: they were convicted of first degree murder.
Speaker 4: And do you think that given all of the information,
Speaker 4: and you know, in your book you provide all of
Speaker 4: the murderous information about how these boys took twelve gage
Speaker 4: rifles and reloaded three times, killed their mother, killed their father,
Speaker 4: the sentiments and the emotions that are there and that
Speaker 4: were there, and the evidence that were presented to the
Speaker 4: jurors in this potential new trial, how do you believe
Speaker 4: that they can What is the goal? Is it a
Speaker 4: second degree murder conviction or is it the manslaughter even
Speaker 4: though you say that manslaughter is an average of twenty
Speaker 4: to twenty five years. What is the the real, I
Speaker 4: guess achievable goal for them?
Speaker 5: Well, and just correct, you had one quick fact they
Speaker 5: reloaded their guns twice. You can't get around, Yeah, you
Speaker 5: can't get around the basic facts. Eric Dwia Menendez went
Speaker 5: to San Diego and they purchased two shotguns on August eighteenth,
Speaker 5: two days before they filled their parents. And it's pretty
Speaker 5: hard to argue, you know that that doesn't look like
Speaker 5: pree meditation. But the Menenda's the general public was confused
Speaker 5: about Menenda's defense. The general public, again because of what
Speaker 5: they were consuming in the mainstream media. The general public
Speaker 5: thought that Menanda's defense was we were sexually molested, we
Speaker 5: were abused, therefore we get a free pass to kill
Speaker 5: our parents. That was not the legal defense. The legal
Speaker 5: defense was that we were in fear for our lives
Speaker 5: after there were a series of confrontations the brothers testified
Speaker 5: about in the days leading up for the murders, and
Speaker 5: the brothers claimed that they went to buy guns because
Speaker 5: they thought their parents were going to kill them. Here's
Speaker 5: another interesting little factory. Kitty Menendez had two rifles in
Speaker 5: her closet with ammunition. And there was an interesting statement
Speaker 5: that Jill Lancey Wilmanandez's lead defense attorney, made in her
Speaker 5: closing argument in which she said the brothers on the
Speaker 5: night that the brothers killed their parents, they read the signals,
Speaker 5: and they read the signals wrong. Because it's really easy
Speaker 5: for us, you know, looking at it from a logical
Speaker 5: perspective and from you know, a normal mind, to say,
Speaker 5: wait a minute, this doesn't make any sense. You know,
Speaker 5: how could they have thought that their parents were going
Speaker 5: to kill them? But the research I've done into abuse
Speaker 5: survivors and the trauma that they experienced. And again this
Speaker 5: is based on detailed testimony from sixty five teachers, coaches,
Speaker 5: families and friends. You know, it gives you a completely
Speaker 5: different picture of the brothers. The number one question people
Speaker 5: ask me is, they say they were eighteen twenty one
Speaker 5: years old, why didn't they just walk out the front
Speaker 5: door if things were so bad at home? And the
Speaker 5: answer to that question is the therapy experts have explained
Speaker 5: to me that the emotional maturity of the Nanda's brothers
Speaker 5: somewhere between eight and ten years old. The parents had
Speaker 5: made them very contendent on them. They would use to
Speaker 5: the parents used to do their homework, and it didn't
Speaker 5: take teachers long to figure out that the homework was
Speaker 5: always perfect, and they'd take a test in school and fail.
Speaker 5: The parents would tell them who they could be friends with,
Speaker 5: it who they could date. They controlled every aspect of
Speaker 5: their lives down to the tiniest detail. And here's another
Speaker 5: bizarre factoid. Well, they and Kitty Menendez had bugged both
Speaker 5: Eric and lam Menendez's bedrooms. They had microphones and taping
Speaker 5: equipment and they were taking all of their phone calls.
Speaker 5: Got to ask, you know what normal parent, you know
Speaker 5: put hidden recording equipment in their kids' bedroom so they
Speaker 5: can record all their phone calls. So this was a
Speaker 5: strange family.
Speaker 4: I also read in your book to about the strange demands.
Speaker 4: I mean, this person was an overachiever, ose and kitty
Speaker 4: to a great extent in his beauty queen, and he
Speaker 4: was a very demanding person. Again, the sexual abuse is
Speaker 4: one thing, but if that was taken out of the equation,
Speaker 4: he still was a very demanding And this was a
Speaker 4: very stressful household, wasn't it. And the marriage was on
Speaker 4: the rocks as well.
Speaker 5: Yes, and I mentioned earlier there were sixty five witnesses
Speaker 5: for the defense, teachers, coaches, and family friends. These were
Speaker 5: eye witnesses to physical, verbal, and emotional abuse. In my opinion,
Speaker 5: that could be just traumatic to a five or six
Speaker 5: year old as a sexual molestation. But the growing up
Speaker 5: in the Menendaz household was it was a very strange place.
Speaker 5: And the number two question that people always ask me is, Okay,
Speaker 5: I might be willing to accept that Jose Menendez was
Speaker 5: a monster, but what about their mother? Why did they
Speaker 5: kill their mother? Because we all assumed that all mothers
Speaker 5: are loving and nurturing and caring, and the reality is,
Speaker 5: unfortunately that's not true. And another key line in Leslie
Speaker 5: Abramson's closing argument for Eric Menendez, she said Jose and
Speaker 5: Kitty Menendez ran boot camp Beverly Hills, and Kitty Menendez
Speaker 5: was one of the guards, not one of the prisoners.
Speaker 5: And in the brother's testimony in which they described this
Speaker 5: series of confrontations in the days leading up to the murders,
Speaker 5: the brothers testified that they found out for the first
Speaker 5: time that Kitty Menendez told them that she knew about
Speaker 5: the abuse all along and that she hadn't done any
Speaker 5: thing to protect them. And by the way, there are
Speaker 5: some of these family members that the majority of the
Speaker 5: family members testified for the defense, and that is not
Speaker 5: typical of a murder case where the family members are
Speaker 5: supporting the defendants. And there were two cousins that lived
Speaker 5: with the family over several different summers. One of them
Speaker 5: her name was Diane Vandermillens, and she testified in both
Speaker 5: trials that when Lyle Menendus was eight years old, she
Speaker 5: was living with the family for the summer and he
Speaker 5: came down to her room in the basement one night
Speaker 5: and said that he wanted to stay in her room
Speaker 5: and he was complaining that his father was touching him
Speaker 5: down there. And Diane vannermal And immediately went upstairs and
Speaker 5: talked to Kitty Menendez and said, you know, I'm really
Speaker 5: concerned while came and, you know, just told me this
Speaker 5: story of something weird going on. And according to Dian
Speaker 5: Vannermillen's testimony, Kitty Manendas said, oh, you know, don't listen
Speaker 5: to him, he's just making that up.
Speaker 4: Yeah, incredible. You talk about this confrontation too, and the
Speaker 4: dynamic of Eric being younger than Lyle and Eric being
Speaker 4: Lyle being concerned. So tell us what you've written about
Speaker 4: that dynamic and the confrontation just days before the murder.
Speaker 5: Well, growing up, Eric and Lyle Menendez had a very
Speaker 5: close relationship their entire lives. I mean, basically they had
Speaker 5: each other as their closest friend, their closest competant because
Speaker 5: the parents were so controlling and telling them you can
Speaker 5: be friends with this person, you can be friends with
Speaker 5: that person. But being having such total control over their
Speaker 5: sons' lives, and so the brothers really relied on each other,
Speaker 5: you know, throughout their lives growing up. And there was
Speaker 5: one point when Eric men Has revealed some information about
Speaker 5: the molestation to Lyle when he was thirteen years old.
Speaker 5: And you know, Lyle was very young, thirteen years old,
Speaker 5: and you know, tried to say something to his father,
Speaker 5: but you know, that didn't go anywhere. But Eric Menendez
Speaker 5: revealed to Lyel Menendez about four or five days before
Speaker 5: the murders, before this series of confrontations, that the molestation
Speaker 5: by his father was still going on and he was
Speaker 5: ten years old or i'm a said, may maybe seventeen
Speaker 5: years old, seventeen th eighteen. But Lyle Eddas was shocked
Speaker 5: to hear that it was still going on, and he
Speaker 5: decided that he was going to confront his father. Joseon
Speaker 5: Eddus was on the East coast on a business trip,
Speaker 5: and the brothers kind of made a plan that Lyle
Speaker 5: was going to confront Jose and threatened to go to
Speaker 5: the police or threaten to go to other family members.
Speaker 5: And according to the brother's testimony, these series of confrontations
Speaker 5: got more and more heated as the days went on,
Speaker 5: and when Lyle Menendas did confront his father, according to
Speaker 5: his testimony, Jose Menand is that you know, you know,
Speaker 5: you say you're going to reveal this to relatives or
Speaker 5: the police, I'm never going to let that happen. And
Speaker 5: the brothers had been told throughout their lives as a
Speaker 5: typical of abusers. If you tell anybody, I'm going to
Speaker 5: kill you. And so you have to understand that the
Speaker 5: atmosphere of the world of you know, the strange life
Speaker 5: behind the gates of the Menenda's mansion that the brothers
Speaker 5: grew up in was not a typical situation. And that's
Speaker 5: I think the problem that the public has trying to
Speaker 5: filter this through, you know, our perspectives of you know,
Speaker 5: normological thinking, and we look, we look at some of
Speaker 5: these events and say, that's ridiculous, how could that ever happen?
Speaker 5: But when you learn the history of this family, that's
Speaker 5: when you find out the truth. And one of the
Speaker 5: most interesting things that I learned about Menenda's family and
Speaker 5: these Vets attorneys, Jose Menus was kind of the rich
Speaker 5: uncle in the Meneta's family. A lot of the family
Speaker 5: was not so well off. But if you needed alone,
Speaker 5: if one of your kids needed their first job, you
Speaker 5: went to uncle pose And so nobody ever wanted to
Speaker 5: kiss off the rich uncle, because he never knew when
Speaker 5: you might need the rich uncle. So after the brothers
Speaker 5: are arrested and the defense attorneys get all of these
Speaker 5: family members together in one room, and they all had
Speaker 5: bits and pieces of a puzzle, and they all started
Speaker 5: comparing notes, and the life bulbs started going off over
Speaker 5: everybody's head, and they were horrified to realize that, you know,
Speaker 5: some of their suspicions apparently were true.
Speaker 4: What are the just what's the demeanor of Lyle and Eric? Now,
Speaker 4: when was the last time you spoke to them? And
Speaker 4: what do you think they're thinking right now? And what
Speaker 4: about their plans for this appeal?
Speaker 5: Well that's about three or four questions, but I'll break
Speaker 5: it down again. So the last time I've been in
Speaker 5: regular contact with Lyle Menendez the past few years, actually
Speaker 5: before the pandemic, I was visiting him at Donovant Prison
Speaker 5: near San Diego about every six or eight weeks, and
Speaker 5: we'd spend about five hours talking together, and we talk
Speaker 5: on the phone every couple of weeks. I have not
Speaker 5: been in contact with Eric Menendez for many years. But
Speaker 5: Eric Menendez was actually I was in closer contact with
Speaker 5: him than Lyle during the trials. Both brothers used to
Speaker 5: call me frequently during the two Menendez trials, and so
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty one they are both together. They were
Speaker 5: separated for twenty two years. The La County Probation Department
Speaker 5: recommended that they be placed in the same prison, and
Speaker 5: on the day of their sentence in July second, nineteen
Speaker 5: ninety six, the Beverly Hills foot filed the motion and said,
Speaker 5: we believed that the Menenda's brothers should not be sent
Speaker 5: to the same prison because they were co conspirators in
Speaker 5: a crime, and if they are sent to the same facility,
Speaker 5: it's likely that they will conspire to commit a new crime.
Speaker 5: And that's ridiculous. That was completely done out of spite.
Speaker 5: And so for twenty two years, the Bananda's brothers had
Speaker 5: been in different prisons around California. They were not allowed
Speaker 5: to talk to each other on the phone. The only
Speaker 5: communication they had was two letters or they could get
Speaker 5: information from each other's wives. Both both brothers are Mary,
Speaker 5: by the way, and in April of twenty eighteen, the
Speaker 5: brother lyle Menandaz. In February twenty eighteen, filed for the
Speaker 5: sixth year in a row, asking for a transfer to
Speaker 5: be with his brother, and the California Department of Corrections
Speaker 5: granted his request for a transfer, and both Lyle and
Speaker 5: myself believed that the NBC Law and Order two Crime
Speaker 5: the Menenda's Murder series might have been a factor in
Speaker 5: the California Department of Correction granting his request for a transfer.
Speaker 5: The brothers were reunited and saw each other for the
Speaker 5: first time in April twenty eighteen, and they now see
Speaker 5: each other every day, and they are grateful to be together,
Speaker 5: and the family is grateful that they are together, and
Speaker 5: both brothers have been really good citizens and members of
Speaker 5: their prison community. Lyle Menendez is very involved in the
Speaker 5: prison government. He was head of the prison government at
Speaker 5: neil Creek State Prison for fifteen years. He's an activist
Speaker 5: in prison reform Airic Menendu's created a hospice program at
Speaker 5: Donovan Prison, something he had done at his previous prison.
Speaker 5: He is also leading a weekly group in mindful meditation.
Speaker 5: Lyle leads a weekly group for prisoners who were abused
Speaker 5: when they were kids, and they are in the general population.
Speaker 5: They're both well liked, they have made the best of
Speaker 5: what they can out of their lives, and they're both
Speaker 5: very blessed. They both have loving, supportive wives, which is
Speaker 5: kind of a remarkable, you know, site tangent of the story.
Speaker 5: So they're doing the best they can, but you know,
Speaker 5: and being contributing members to the prison community. But the
Speaker 5: you know, the the Menenda's family would like to see
Speaker 5: them released from jail. Kiddy Menanda's sister is eighty nine
Speaker 5: years old. Jose Menanda's sister, Manta is going to turn
Speaker 5: eighty in July, and their wishes are they would like
Speaker 5: to see the brothers released before they die. And this
Speaker 5: new movement of Menenda supporters all over the world has
Speaker 5: caught all of us, you know, that have been following
Speaker 5: the case closely, has caught all of us by surprise
Speaker 5: and by the boy, this this movement is growing. It's
Speaker 5: not just you know, something like a passing thing on
Speaker 5: on social media. But but I've been tracking it. My
Speaker 5: teenage son came to me last fall about the first
Speaker 5: videos in TikTok, and there are new supporters every day
Speaker 5: I'm picking up I'm picking up fifty to one hundred
Speaker 5: new followers on my social media accounts every week, and
Speaker 5: it's been fascinating to me to interact with you know,
Speaker 5: many of these supporters are young kids, high school and
Speaker 5: college age, and I am so impressed with the research
Speaker 5: they are doing into the facts of the case, in
Speaker 5: the minutia of the case. And one of the resources
Speaker 5: they have available is that the entire trial is available
Speaker 5: on portv dot com and so they're watching the you know,
Speaker 5: the testimony of all the witnesses, they are getting into
Speaker 5: the transcripts, and I mean, I'm really kind of pulled
Speaker 5: over by the enthusiasm for these new supporters. But I
Speaker 5: also want to mention that even though the perception of
Speaker 5: the media again is that oh, these are just kids,
Speaker 5: high school kids, college kids. I have been in touch
Speaker 5: with adult supporters in different parts of the world. One
Speaker 5: of the people I've spoken with is a NYPD officer
Speaker 5: in New York who is believes the Brothers should be
Speaker 5: released from jail. I've spoken to people in Germany that
Speaker 5: believe the same thing adults, And there are a number
Speaker 5: of adults who were abused when they were kids that
Speaker 5: have been long time supporters of the brothers, and there
Speaker 5: have been new members with that background in this supporter community.
Speaker 5: And in fact, when the Brothers were on trial in
Speaker 5: nineteen ninety three their first trial, they were getting one
Speaker 5: thousand letters a week from people all over the world.
Speaker 5: About half those letters were from groupies, young girls that
Speaker 5: you know, thought they were attractive and you know, we're
Speaker 5: interested in watching the case on TV. But half the
Speaker 5: letters the brothers were getting were from adults who had
Speaker 5: been abused when they were kids, and they wrote to
Speaker 5: Eric and Lyolmaneze's and said, nobody believed me when I
Speaker 5: was a little kid, and I believe you. And when
Speaker 5: Lylmanz testified in the first trial, so every day he
Speaker 5: was on the witness stand, he carried he carried one
Speaker 5: of those letters in his pocket from a different abuse survivors.
Speaker 4: Interesting, fascinating. I know that this movement has been aided
Speaker 4: by things like ABC's twenty twenty, the two hour special
Speaker 4: April second, that was just recently again talking about the
Speaker 4: international movement of new Menendez supporters. But you have on
Speaker 4: your website a lot of the information, the links to
Speaker 4: the court, TV and the trial and your appearance at
Speaker 4: the trial is very interesting, So I suggest people go
Speaker 4: and check that out. Very very fascinating information you have
Speaker 4: on your site right the Menendez murders. Thank you.
Speaker 5: The website is Menendez Murders dot com easy to remember.
Speaker 4: Yes, I want to thank you very much for coming
Speaker 4: on and talking about the new Menendez defenders, the international
Speaker 4: movement of supporters who want Lyle and Eric set free.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much, Robert Rand. And also I just
Speaker 4: want to remind people that all of this information, the
Speaker 4: scoops that you talk about likely evidence that we'll be
Speaker 4: in this new appeal and in the third trial hopefully
Speaker 4: is containing the Menendez murders. So thank you so much,
Speaker 4: Robert Rand. For the new Menendez Defenders. It's been fascinating
Speaker 4: speaking to you about all things new with the Menendez
Speaker 4: brothers and their fight for a new trial.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for having me on. Dan, good
Speaker 5: to talk to you again.
Speaker 4: Thank you, good night, goodness.
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