Speaker 1: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 1: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 1: written about them. Gaesy Bundy Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK Every
Speaker 1: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 1: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 1: host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 2: Good Evening, a successful entertainment executive making two million a
Speaker 2: year his former beauty queen wife. They are two sons
Speaker 2: on the fast track to success, but it was all
Speaker 2: a facade. The Menendez saga has captivated the American public
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine, the killing of Ose and Kitty Menendez
Speaker 2: on a quiet Sunday evening in Beverly Hills didn't make
Speaker 2: the cover of People magazine until the arrest of their
Speaker 2: sons seven months later, when the case developed an intense
Speaker 2: cult following. By the time the first Menendez trial began
Speaker 2: in July nineteen ninety three, the public was convinced that
Speaker 2: Lyle and Eric were a pair of greedy, rich kids
Speaker 2: who had killed loving, devoted parents. The real story remained
Speaker 2: buried beneath years of dark secrets, A culmination of more
Speaker 2: than thirty years of journalist Robert Rand's relentless reporting. This
Speaker 2: updated edition of The Menendez Murders shares these intimate breakthrough findings,
Speaker 2: including a deeply disturbing history of child abuse and sexual
Speaker 2: molestation in the man Menendez family going back generations, as
Speaker 2: well as exclusive new revelations linking the nineteen eighties boy
Speaker 2: band Menudo and the Menendez family. Journalist and author Robert
Speaker 2: Rand has followed the Menendez murders from the beginning and
Speaker 2: is the only reporter who covered the original investigation as
Speaker 2: well as both trials with the unique vantage and unparalleled
Speaker 2: access to the Menendez family and their history, including interviews
Speaker 2: with both brothers before and after their arrest and to
Speaker 2: this day. In twenty twenty three, Rand uncovered extraordinary material
Speaker 2: evidence that would certainly have changed the fate of the
Speaker 2: brother's first degree murder conviction in nineteen ninety six. He
Speaker 2: and the Menendez family hoped his discoveries would give the
Speaker 2: brothers new hope for reopening the case. The Netflix film
Speaker 2: series Monsters was released September nineteenth with over twenty million
Speaker 2: viewers and much controversy, with Netflix also releasing their documentary
Speaker 2: The Menendez Brothers featuring Robert Rand to be released October seventh.
Speaker 2: On October third, Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon made
Speaker 2: an announcement that his office is reviewing the convictions of
Speaker 2: the Menendez brothers to determine whether they should be resentenced
Speaker 2: and potentially released. A hearing has been scheduled for November
Speaker 2: twenty sixth. Journalist and author Robert Rand joins me to
Speaker 2: discuss the Menendez Murder's updated edition, Netflix's Monsters and the
Speaker 2: Menendez Brothers documentary, and his incredible role in the historic
Speaker 2: Menendez murder case. Welcome back to the program, and thank
Speaker 2: you very much for this interview. Robert Rand, Hell, Dan Good,
Speaker 2: Josh here again. Thank you so much. It's thank you
Speaker 2: for this interview, especially in the incredible timing of everything
Speaker 2: that's gone on in the Menedez case so far.
Speaker 3: Well, it's been a very exciting, too much.
Speaker 2: On the updated we're talking about the updated edition of
Speaker 2: The Menendez Murders, and on the back cover you're write,
Speaker 2: discover the updated edition of the definitive book on the
Speaker 2: Menendez case and the disquieting true story behind Netflix Monsters,
Speaker 2: the Lylan Eric Menendez story, and you're write the new
Speaker 2: evidence that you've uncovered gives the brothers hope for reopening
Speaker 2: the case. Now that hope is a hearing November twenty sixth,
Speaker 2: thanks to you and Marta Cano. But before, let's go back,
Speaker 2: Before we go to the groundbreaking evidence you were able
Speaker 2: to discover and the Netflix hit film Monsters and the
Speaker 2: just released Menendez Brothers documentary, and also your involvement with
Speaker 2: the docu series Menendez and Minudo, Let's go back to
Speaker 2: August twenty first, nineteen eighty nine and a phone call
Speaker 2: from Stephen Apple Video Insider magazine. Who were you and
Speaker 2: where were you professionally as a writer at that time,
Speaker 2: and tell us about that faithful phone call.
Speaker 3: I was a freelance and a freelance writer for the
Speaker 3: Sunday magazine, the late Great propic magazine at the Miami Herald.
Speaker 3: On I was twenty first, nineteen eighty nine. I was
Speaker 3: in the Miami Herald newsroom about ten in the morning,
Speaker 3: and my good friend Stephen Apple, a good friend going
Speaker 3: back to college, actually happened to be the editor of
Speaker 3: a trade magazine for the home video business called Video Insider,
Speaker 3: and I had just spent two months doing reporting about
Speaker 3: the home video business, and I was about to write
Speaker 3: a major investigative story for the Miami Herald Sunday magazine,
Speaker 3: and I got a phone call from Steve Abbel and
Speaker 3: what he told me was that a high profile home
Speaker 3: video executive and his wife had been killed the night
Speaker 3: before in Beverly Hills. I remember he either told me
Speaker 3: or I found out within a few minutes that Jose
Speaker 3: Menendez was Cuban American, and so that made it of
Speaker 3: potential interest to people in Miami, which has the large
Speaker 3: Cuban American community. Also, you know, I had this two
Speaker 3: months of reporting I just completed it about the home
Speaker 3: video business. So I was primed and ready to get
Speaker 3: into this story. And within ten days I found out
Speaker 3: that Jose Mendez had a sister, march Cano, who lived
Speaker 3: in West Palm Beach, Florida, so near Miami. So using
Speaker 3: the nineteen eighty nine technology, I got out the phone
Speaker 3: book for West Palm and I looked up Marx Cano
Speaker 3: and she was listed, and I called her up five
Speaker 3: percent to make a condolence call and ninety five percent
Speaker 3: to possibly hit on her for a story, and she
Speaker 3: within a few minutes of our talking, she immediately invited
Speaker 3: me to come to her home that afternoon, which was
Speaker 3: about ninety minutes away from Miami, and we spent the
Speaker 3: entire afternoon not talking about the mers which had happened
Speaker 3: ten days earlier, but we were talking about the Menendas
Speaker 3: family history, which was quite an interesting story. The family
Speaker 3: had started in Spain, they were poor, they became wealthy,
Speaker 3: and then when Franco came into power, they lost everything
Speaker 3: and immigrated to Cuba, and once again they started out
Speaker 3: very poor. They became wealthy all over again, and then
Speaker 3: Castro came into power and once again the family lost
Speaker 3: all of their assets. So their next move was to
Speaker 3: come to the States in the early nineteen sixties, and
Speaker 3: once again they had nothing, and once again they became wealthy.
Speaker 3: The family had a very interesting story. And then the
Speaker 3: most interesting thing that march Can shared with me that
Speaker 3: first day was that Jose Menendez had a five year
Speaker 3: plan to retire from the entertainment business and he wanted
Speaker 3: to buy a family compound for the whole family live
Speaker 3: in in Miami, and Jose wanted to run for the
Speaker 3: US Senate and aust Castro from Cuba, the man who
Speaker 3: had ended his country club lifestyle in Havana and forced
Speaker 3: him to live in the attic of relatives in northeast Pennsylvania,
Speaker 3: where he was penniless, and this happened overnight to him
Speaker 3: when he was sixteen. So the title of that first
Speaker 3: story that I wrote, which by the way, I was
Speaker 3: not assigned to write a story about the murder investigation,
Speaker 3: because there were seven months between the killing of Hussey
Speaker 3: and Kitty Menanzas and the rest of Lyle and Eric Menuzus,
Speaker 3: who were charged with killing them. So all of the
Speaker 3: initial media speculation was that this was some kind of
Speaker 3: mob hit related to the home video business. And I
Speaker 3: had just finished two months of reporting about the home
Speaker 3: edy business, so I was very well sourced in that area.
Speaker 3: And I immediately reached out to everybody I had talked to
Speaker 3: in home video, and they told me, we don't think
Speaker 3: this has anything to do with the homebody business. They said,
Speaker 3: people do lots of things in Hollywood to get even,
Speaker 3: but they usually don't kill you. They may do who
Speaker 3: knows what to get even if you've crossed them, but
Speaker 3: they don't kill you. And so everybody, one of my
Speaker 3: home video sources told me, we don't think this has
Speaker 3: anything to do with the home video business. As I said,
Speaker 3: I went and met march Caano about ten days after
Speaker 3: the killings, and she told me what was a really
Speaker 3: fascinating family history Spain to keep it to the States,
Speaker 3: to Jose planning to retire from the entertainment business and
Speaker 3: run for the US Senate in Florida. And so you know,
Speaker 3: the title of my initial article that appeared in christ
Speaker 3: Received nineteen eighty nine, about three months before Eric Lele
Speaker 3: Nandus were wrestled. The title of our story was who
Speaker 3: killed the next US Senator from Florida.
Speaker 2: Right at that time, Marta insisted that to really understand
Speaker 2: the Menendez family, you would have to interview Eric and Lyle.
Speaker 2: Now tell us about this planned interview and what happened.
Speaker 3: Well, along with the Eric and Lyle, you know, Marche
Speaker 3: had some other people who worked at Jose Live Entertainment
Speaker 3: that she wanted me to interview. You know, I was
Speaker 3: doing a biography Rag Suritius immigrant saga ends in a
Speaker 3: terrible tragedy, and so I came out to La for
Speaker 3: two weeks in late October of nineteen eighty nine, two
Speaker 3: months of the killings, five months before the brothers rusted,
Speaker 3: and I interviewed many people at Live Entertainment. I spoke
Speaker 3: with some of my sources in the Home of New Business,
Speaker 3: and I also had an interview planned with Eric and Lyles,
Speaker 3: and they canceled on me two or three times. And
Speaker 3: I was finally at a point where I had to
Speaker 3: come home to Miami, and I called Marta in Florida
Speaker 3: and said, I really would like to talk to Eric Lyle,
Speaker 3: but they've canceled on me two or three times. Can
Speaker 3: you call them and tell them they have to sit
Speaker 3: down with me? And she did, and they agreed to
Speaker 3: meet me on a Friday afternoon. And so I showed
Speaker 3: up at the mansion in Beverly Hills where jose and
Speaker 3: kiddyman and were killed and knocked on the door and
Speaker 3: the brothers weren't home. One of their girlfriends answered the
Speaker 3: door and said, oh, they're up playing tennis, but they'll
Speaker 3: be here soon. Would you like tour the house? And
Speaker 3: so I said sure, and so for forty five minutes.
Speaker 3: It was a very large, eight thousand square foot mansion,
Speaker 3: and there was also a guest house on the property,
Speaker 3: a two story guest house behind the main house. And
Speaker 3: we walked all around the property for forty five minutes
Speaker 3: and We kept walking by the room where the killings
Speaker 3: actually took place, and I remember thinking to myself, I mean,
Speaker 3: I really fell a chill every time we walked by
Speaker 3: that room. And I remember thinking to myself, boy, if
Speaker 3: my parents had been brutally murdered in this house, I
Speaker 3: don't know if I'd be living here right. And I
Speaker 3: just kept having that feeling every time we walked by
Speaker 3: that room. One of the things that I saw as
Speaker 3: we were walking around the house was I saw the
Speaker 3: upstairs closets of Jsse and Kitty Menanaz. There were two
Speaker 3: rifles in the closet of Kiddy Menendez that I later
Speaker 3: found out were loaded on the night of the that
Speaker 3: they were killed.
Speaker 2: You talked also the investigators Less Zohler and Tom Lenahan
Speaker 2: and talked about potential suspects in this, didn't you.
Speaker 3: We did. Even though my assignment was not to write
Speaker 3: about the murder investigation, I certainly called the lead Beverly
Speaker 3: Hills detectives Less Solar and Tom Lanahan, and they agreed
Speaker 3: to have lunch for me, and we spent the entire lunch.
Speaker 3: They were totally blowing smoke at me. We were comparing
Speaker 3: you know, Columbian mob hits that I was used to
Speaker 3: living in Miami and covering the news there to Italian
Speaker 3: mob hits, and you know what, did you know? They
Speaker 3: were asking me, what did I think this was a
Speaker 3: columbiing hit or an Italian hit, And they were totally
Speaker 3: blowing smoke at me. They within ten days after the
Speaker 3: killing of Saying Kitty, they had a phone call from
Speaker 3: a lawyer representing the mother of one of their school friends.
Speaker 3: This lawyer told the detectives, you really should look carefully
Speaker 3: at eric Lyle menendous. So in other words, they had
Speaker 3: a tip and they took it very seriously. So they
Speaker 3: were investigating the brothers within two weeks. Of course, none
Speaker 3: of that was public. When I had lunch with them
Speaker 3: in late October of eighty nine, they didn't give me
Speaker 3: a hint that the brothers were involved in anyway. Going
Speaker 3: back to the first Sam met Eric Lyle within about
Speaker 3: forty five minutes after our appointment time of three o'clock,
Speaker 3: they came bouncing in the front door. They were laughing
Speaker 3: and smiling. They were wearing tennis whites. You know, they
Speaker 3: looked like they didn't have care in the world. You know,
Speaker 3: we're in a good mood, and so the three of
Speaker 3: us went into a breakfast the room off the kitchen
Speaker 3: and sat down, and I pulled out a tape recorder
Speaker 3: and a notepad, and Lyle Menandez said, actually, we don't
Speaker 3: want to do the interview today, so please, no notes,
Speaker 3: no recording. We just wanted to get to know you.
Speaker 3: And that first day we were together for about ninety minutes,
Speaker 3: Lyle did the ninety percent of the talking. He told me,
Speaker 3: you know, how great their parents were, what an incredible
Speaker 3: man their father was, just you know, saying, you know,
Speaker 3: very nice things. Eric did very little talking that day.
Speaker 3: When Eric did talk, he would look over to Lyle
Speaker 3: as if you know, am I doing okay? Is everything
Speaker 3: all right? So it was just, you know, it was
Speaker 3: a normal conversation. The brothers were not suspects publicly. I
Speaker 3: had no reason to be suspicious of them. So at
Speaker 3: the end of the ninety minutes, we agreed that we
Speaker 3: would meet on noon on Sunday and we would do
Speaker 3: the formal interview. And I explained to them that I've
Speaker 3: been out in LA for two weeks and we had
Speaker 3: to do that interview on Sunday because I had to
Speaker 3: go back to Miami on Monday, and everybody agreed. So
Speaker 3: what I did on purpose, I actually switched hotels over
Speaker 3: the weekend on Saturday, and I didn't want them to
Speaker 3: know how to find me because I didn't want them
Speaker 3: to cancelog me again. And so I just showed up
Speaker 3: at the mansion on Sunday at noon. The brother's grandmother,
Speaker 3: Maria answered the door, and I said, you know, I'm
Speaker 3: Bob Rand from the Miami Herald. I'm here to talk
Speaker 3: with Eric and Lyle. And the grandmother Maria told me
Speaker 3: Lyle had to go to New Jersey. The night before,
Speaker 3: he took a red eye to New York because he
Speaker 3: had a problem with the chicken ring restaurant he had
Speaker 3: bought in Princeton, where he was going to school. She said, well,
Speaker 3: Eric is asleep upstairs. Do you want me to wake
Speaker 3: him up? And I said, well, I'm sorry, but yes,
Speaker 3: I do want you to wake him up, because you know,
Speaker 3: it's my last say in California and I have to
Speaker 3: speak with him. And so fifteen minutes later, Eric came down,
Speaker 3: just out of the shower with wet hair. We sat
Speaker 3: for about three and a half hours in the formal
Speaker 3: living room of the mansion. You know, I had to
Speaker 3: tape a corner with me, and I have a recording
Speaker 3: of that entire interview, and most of the time he
Speaker 3: was telling me very loving, caring stories about how wonderful
Speaker 3: his parents were, that he missed them. You know that
Speaker 3: both he and Lyle were very sad. They couldn't imagine
Speaker 3: life without their parents. And at one point I said, look,
Speaker 3: I'm not you know, about two hours in, I said,
Speaker 3: I'm not doing a story about the murder investigation, but
Speaker 3: I have to ask you a couple of questions about
Speaker 3: the night you came home and found your parents' bodies.
Speaker 3: And so for the next twelve minutes we talked about that,
Speaker 3: and Eric answered questions again in nineteen eighty nine technology
Speaker 3: the tape on my audio CASSIP player ran out after
Speaker 3: about twelve minutes, and Eric was crying softly at this point,
Speaker 3: and he said, can we stop talking about this? It's
Speaker 3: very hard for me to go back and you know,
Speaker 3: relived that night. And I said, of course. And so
Speaker 3: we never talked about the the killings after that, but
Speaker 3: I have about twelve minutes that are quite interesting. Some
Speaker 3: of them it is in my book The Mendus murders.
Speaker 3: That's how that went. And so at the end of
Speaker 3: three and a half hours of doing a formal interview,
Speaker 3: Eric actually volunteered to spend more time with me, and
Speaker 3: he said, would you like to go out to cal
Speaker 3: Vasas about thirty five forty minutes away and see the
Speaker 3: dream house my parents were remodeling. And I said, sure,
Speaker 3: I would love to go out and see it. And
Speaker 3: so Eric and grandmother Maria and I jumped into his
Speaker 3: cheap and we went out to cal Vasas and he
Speaker 3: walked me all around this house. And so basically we
Speaker 3: spent another two hours together. And so one would think
Speaker 3: somebody who you know, has just finished a three and
Speaker 3: a half hour interview with a reporter, and if he
Speaker 3: wanted to get away, you know, or stop being with
Speaker 3: the reporter, he would have said goodbye, you know, when
Speaker 3: we finished the interview, But he volunteered to spend more
Speaker 3: time with me, you know. Then I drove them back
Speaker 3: to Beverly Hills, and nine days after Eric spent three
Speaker 3: and a half hours telling me how much he loved
Speaker 3: his parents and how wonderful they were. Eric went to
Speaker 3: doctor Jerome Mosille, a therapist in Beverly Hills and confessed
Speaker 3: that he and Lyle were responsible for killing their parents.
Speaker 3: And I always wondered what impact did that three and
Speaker 3: a half hour interview have on him that may have
Speaker 3: motivated him to go to a therapist. Then I found
Speaker 3: out that he had been really doing very poorly, And
Speaker 3: this is one of the biggest You know, there are
Speaker 3: a number of inaccurate scenes in Monsters, the Netflix scripted
Speaker 3: series aboutcase, but one of them that really sticks out
Speaker 3: in episode one is you know, they had the brothers
Speaker 3: part being like crazy, you know, you know, dancing and
Speaker 3: snorting lines coke and all that set And first of all,
Speaker 3: friends and brothers tell me they were straight out or jux.
Speaker 3: Eric Lahmanns were nationally reged tennis players in the fall
Speaker 3: of eighty nine. Apparently they never did drugs, is what
Speaker 3: all of the fronts unanimously told me. And Le's favorite
Speaker 3: drink was Shila Sunrise. You also liked drinking the wine
Speaker 3: coolers at parties. Those scenes where you see them partying
Speaker 3: like mad in Monsters are totally false.
Speaker 2: Robert, Let's just use this as an opportunity to stop
Speaker 2: to hear these messages. You spoke about Eric going to
Speaker 2: doctor o'zill. You talked about you write about Eric being
Speaker 2: suicidal and then confessing the infamous confession to doctor Roseille.
Speaker 2: Let's just fast forward a little bit to how it
Speaker 2: became that the client privilege rule had this exception. What
Speaker 2: was the exception to that privilege that allowed this evidence
Speaker 2: of the confession to be in both trials?
Speaker 3: Okay, so now let's pass forward from the crime was
Speaker 3: in August nineteen eighty nine, and Eric Lahmanandas were arrested
Speaker 3: in charged with murder in March of nineteen ninety. Normally,
Speaker 3: you would have a privilege with the therapist for anything
Speaker 3: that you share with the therapist. Under California law, there's
Speaker 3: something called the tearsoft rule which lays out several exceptions
Speaker 3: to the privilege law, and some of them are, you know,
Speaker 3: if you tell the therapists I'm going to go murder
Speaker 3: my girlfriend tomorrow, the therapist is obligated to go to law.
Speaker 3: If you threaten your therapists and you say I'm going
Speaker 3: to hurt you, I'm going to hurt your family, I'm
Speaker 3: going to hurt other people around you, the therapist can
Speaker 3: also break the privilege. So what happened was that there's
Speaker 3: a side story with the therapist, doctor Jerome Oziel, and
Speaker 3: doctor Ozil was married to another therapist at that time
Speaker 3: named Laurel Ozel. And also doctor Ozel had a mistress
Speaker 3: on the side whose name was Judelan Smith. And so
Speaker 3: Judelan Smith plays kind of a key role in the
Speaker 3: whole case because she claimed that she had been in
Speaker 3: doctor Rozel's waiting room and overheard the confession of the brothers.
Speaker 3: You know, she in early news reports said, I heard
Speaker 3: with my own ears, I heard their voices that they
Speaker 3: had killed their parents. And I don't believe she was
Speaker 3: ever there. What I believe is that doctor Ozel gosped
Speaker 3: with his girlfriend and told her about the confession. He
Speaker 3: was so excited that, you know, that these clients that
Speaker 3: were fairly high profile had told them about a confession,
Speaker 3: and he got with his girlfriend. And so there was
Speaker 3: a drama over a period of several months where Julan
Speaker 3: Smith started threatening to go to the police as her
Speaker 3: relationship with o'zeild sowurd and so incredible as it sounds,
Speaker 3: Jerry o'zeal and Laura o'zel moved Judelan Smith into their
Speaker 3: house with their two young daughters eight and ten years old,
Speaker 3: and they were trying to keep the lid on her
Speaker 3: from going to the police. So she lived in their
Speaker 3: guest room for about three or four months, and finally
Speaker 3: one night they came home and found a smith talking
Speaker 3: to their daughters and saying I'm going to be your
Speaker 3: new mommy, and so they immediately kicked her out of
Speaker 3: the house and the next day she went to the
Speaker 3: Beverly Hills police and said Eric lelmanandus killed the parents.
Speaker 3: Doctor Jero Moziel has audio tapes in a safe class
Speaker 3: box in German Oaks that led to a Beverly Hills
Speaker 3: police search war the next day of a Joziel's house
Speaker 3: in Saint Flaster Box. Loomanendez was arrested within a few hours,
Speaker 3: and Eric Menandas was actually playing in a test tournament
Speaker 3: in Israel and he flew to London and got out
Speaker 3: of Israel before Interpool. Police came to arrest him within
Speaker 3: a few hours, but he was gone and so they
Speaker 3: had no idea where he was. And he was actually
Speaker 3: hiding out in a hotel with his test coach in
Speaker 3: London and attorney Robert Shapiro, who we know from the
Speaker 3: oj case arranged for him to come back and surrender
Speaker 3: in Los Angeles, and if Eric Menandez had just walked
Speaker 3: into any police session in London, it would have been
Speaker 3: a condition of his extradition that he not be eligible
Speaker 3: for the death ely because Britain does not have the
Speaker 3: death Bellys. So instead, Robert Shapiro made him eligible for
Speaker 3: the death Elite by having him surrender in Los Angeles.
Speaker 3: Eric left London, met his aunt March Keno and his
Speaker 3: cousin Andy Keno, who he was close with. Andy is
Speaker 3: March Canon's daughter son sorry mar Andy and Eric all
Speaker 3: flew from Miami to LA and the Beverly HS police
Speaker 3: detections were there, lax says, the plane land and they
Speaker 3: arrested Eric.
Speaker 2: Mnun's when you originally spoke to Eric Menendez regarding any
Speaker 2: talk of sexual abuse, you had no hint till the
Speaker 2: trial that there was any sexual abuse, except that there
Speaker 2: was one telling conversation in retrospect, I guess that talked
Speaker 2: about Jose showering with the two grown sons.
Speaker 3: Well. In the course of a three hour, three and
Speaker 3: a half hour interview, Eric Menanda said a couple things
Speaker 3: that in hindsight became very important, and one of them
Speaker 3: was that he and Lyle used to shower with their father.
Speaker 3: But I did you know, that was just a remark
Speaker 3: in passing. I didn't think that much of it, because
Speaker 3: when I was a little boy, like three or four
Speaker 3: years old, I'd take showers with my dad. After we
Speaker 3: I would go to the gym with him. You know,
Speaker 3: I loved going to the gym. We'd get all hot
Speaker 3: and sweaty, and you know, come home and take shower together.
Speaker 3: So I didn't think anything about that comment because that
Speaker 3: was my experience. There was another comment that Eric made,
Speaker 3: and then an initial interview in which he told me
Speaker 3: that his father was very close to a man named
Speaker 3: Edgardo Diaz, who was the manager and creator of Menudo,
Speaker 3: the Latin boy band. And Eric told me that Edgar
Speaker 3: to Diaz was so grateful that Jose had Simon Ull
Speaker 3: to a thirty million dollar contract when he was at
Speaker 3: RCAE records, that Edgara wanted to buy Jose A Ferrari
Speaker 3: as a gift. Wow. That again, that just you know,
Speaker 3: went right by me. You know, it didn't mean anything.
Speaker 3: I didn't know who Edgar to Deal was. I'd heard
Speaker 3: of the band, venew before. But again I didn't think
Speaker 3: anything about those comments until many years later, when each
Speaker 3: comment became you know, very significant.
Speaker 2: Now about the sexual abuse there with doctor ozil regarding
Speaker 2: sexual abuse in that confession. There aren't any real details
Speaker 2: of sexual abuse by Jose, but there is physical abuse
Speaker 2: and intimidation and domination.
Speaker 3: I would say, but.
Speaker 2: The idea of sexual abuse comes up as a defense
Speaker 2: because it's necessitated because of these confession tapes that you
Speaker 2: consider was just a blackmail effort by doctor roseil Well.
Speaker 3: The defense actually, defense journeys Lesie Amerson and Jill Lansing
Speaker 3: actually accused Ozell of blackmailing the brothers during the first
Speaker 3: trial because after you know, the initial confession and you know,
Speaker 3: the brothers just calming down and seen o'zeal again, o'ceal
Speaker 3: told them at one point, according to the defense journeys,
Speaker 3: that he was going schedule five appointments a week for
Speaker 3: each brother, so in other words, two old appointments to day.
Speaker 3: And he said, I'm going to be billing your relatives
Speaker 3: back east for these therapy appointments. And o'zell said to them,
Speaker 3: I don't care if you ever show up, And so
Speaker 3: the relatives in Florida and New Jersey were getting these
Speaker 3: large bills every week from doctor Oziel. You know, they
Speaker 3: called Eric Lytle at one point and said, why is
Speaker 3: doctor Rozil billing you for so much therapy? You know,
Speaker 3: why were we getting these enormous bills. One of them
Speaker 3: was ten thousand dollars a week. And Eric Lytle told them,
Speaker 3: please just pay the bills. The therapy is really helping us.
Speaker 3: And the reality is they never showed up. They never
Speaker 3: went to any therapy sessions, except they did have a
Speaker 3: therapy session. On a so called therapy session on December eleventh,
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty nine, doctor Oziel recorded the hour. And the
Speaker 3: story that's not really well known is that actually a
Speaker 3: very high profile criminal defense journey in La Gerald Chalib
Speaker 3: was representing book Brothers at that time and he negotiated
Speaker 3: for forty five minutes with doctor about what was going
Speaker 3: to happen during the so called recorded therapy session, so
Speaker 3: that actually that was negotiated before they ever turned on
Speaker 3: the tapeword of that day, and the brothers never said
Speaker 3: a word about sexual abuse. They talked about other problems
Speaker 3: they had with their parents, but they didn't say a
Speaker 3: word about sexual abuse. And one key fact to know
Speaker 3: is that in the fall of nineteen ninety, the brothers
Speaker 3: finally admitted to their family immediate family members that they
Speaker 3: were responsible for their parents' deaths. But air k Lauman
Speaker 3: Anddus told the defense journeys, we never want to go
Speaker 3: on the witness stand and talk about our family secrets.
Speaker 3: You know, we just don't. We will never do that.
Speaker 3: The defense attorneys said to them, well, you know, you
Speaker 3: have to. You have to work with us here because
Speaker 3: if you don't talk about what really happened in the family,
Speaker 3: you could be put to death. This was a death
Speaker 3: heavily case, and so over time the defense journeys were
Speaker 3: able to convince the brothers that they had talked about
Speaker 3: the abuse. So Eric and Lyell Nendus never wanted to
Speaker 3: reveal these family secrets, even though they were facing the Deathly.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about Leslie Abramson, her fierce battle at trial
Speaker 2: and introducing this sexual abuse as evidence in this trial
Speaker 2: to mitigate these charges, and to beyond mitigate these charges,
Speaker 2: to have these charges gone. Let's talk about though that
Speaker 2: evidence its result, because we've got to get to the
Speaker 2: story of how we get to the second trial and
Speaker 2: that same information that was crucial at the first trial
Speaker 2: is limited or if not totally eliminated from the trial.
Speaker 3: Sure well, Lessie Aberson is an incredible force of nature,
Speaker 3: amazing power an attorney. That is like watching her in court,
Speaker 3: it's like watching great theater. She is so strong, so powerful,
Speaker 3: effective in what she does. And so she made a
Speaker 3: tact cold decision that she wouldn't go public until two
Speaker 3: weeks before the first trial with the defense story that
Speaker 3: the brothers had been severely sexually molested in their entire lives.
Speaker 3: You know, the public for three years has heard the
Speaker 3: prosecution version the story, which was really rich kids kill
Speaker 3: Ozzie and Harriet on Sunday at Beverly Hills. So when
Speaker 3: two weeks before the first trial, Leslie Aberson does a
Speaker 3: couple interviews with AP and the other times, and she says, actually,
Speaker 3: Eric Laumananz were sexual abuse victims. That's why, you know,
Speaker 3: this family was falling apart, this functional family. They had
Speaker 3: a series of competitions in the weeks in the week
Speaker 3: before the killings, and it ended in this terrible tragedy.
Speaker 3: And so in the first trial, the defense, led by
Speaker 3: Abramson and Jill Lanson, put on over fifty witnesses, teachers, coaches,
Speaker 3: family friends, relatives who told bits and pieces of a puzzle.
Speaker 3: It was really kind of a complete story when you
Speaker 3: put this puzzle together. And so at the end of
Speaker 3: the first trial, half of the jurors actually there were
Speaker 3: two juries, one for each brother because some of the
Speaker 3: evidence only applied to one brother or the other brother,
Speaker 3: and half the jurors on each jury, all the women
Speaker 3: voted for manslaughter, All the men voted for murder. And
Speaker 3: I interviewed all twenty four jurors after the first trial,
Speaker 3: and all the men told me some version of well,
Speaker 3: a father would never do that to his sons, so
Speaker 3: we didn't believe that story. The women obviously had a
Speaker 3: different point of view. Over fifty defense witnesses that presented
Speaker 3: bits and pieces of a puzzle made an impact on them,
Speaker 3: and they voted for manslaughter. And if there had been
Speaker 3: a manslaughter conviction, which is how I believe the first
Speaker 3: trial should have ended, the brothers would have been sentenced
Speaker 3: to twenty two years, and now they've been in jail
Speaker 3: for thirty four years and six months. So in other words,
Speaker 3: Eric Lahmnandez would have been released twelve years ago and
Speaker 3: instead they're still incultrated.
Speaker 2: But Jesus has an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now,
Speaker 2: let's discuss how this is a hung jury, so there's
Speaker 2: a mistrial. So we get to the second trial. Just
Speaker 2: briefly explain how on earth it is that they don't
Speaker 2: use the same witnesses. They're not able to use the
Speaker 2: same witnesses, and they're not able to put forth the
Speaker 2: same sexual abuse defense.
Speaker 3: So in the second menendous trial, it was the same
Speaker 3: trial Judge Tanley Weisberg as first trial. But the first
Speaker 3: thing he did was he hicked the TV camera out
Speaker 3: of the courtroom. The first trial was carried live gavel
Speaker 3: by court TV. Judge Weisberg knew that kicking the TV
Speaker 3: camera out of the courtroom would cut way down on
Speaker 3: the media coverage of the case, which was huge in
Speaker 3: the first trial, and he was right. That did cut
Speaker 3: way down on the coverage. And then Judge Weishner proceeded
Speaker 3: ruling by ruling to reverse almost all of his evidence
Speaker 3: rulings that he had made in the first trial. So
Speaker 3: basically he severely limited the defense. He cut the heart
Speaker 3: out of the defense by reversing these evidence rulings. The
Speaker 3: defense was not allowed to put on almost all of
Speaker 3: their witnesses from the first trial, and the witnesses that
Speaker 3: were allowed to satisfy were severely limited in what they
Speaker 3: could say because basically Wesberg ruled whether Eric Leilemnendez were
Speaker 3: abused or not, that has no impact on this murder case.
Speaker 3: So therefore it has no relevance. Then therefore we're not
Speaker 3: going to allow the jury to hear that evidence. So
Speaker 3: I don't blame the second trial jury for voting the
Speaker 3: way they did. They heard a completely different set of
Speaker 3: evidence than the first trial jury. The final stake in
Speaker 3: the heart part of the defense came on the last
Speaker 3: state trial when Judge Weisberg told the defense attorneys that
Speaker 3: they would not be allowed to argue in perfect self
Speaker 3: defense in their closing eyes arguments, and again that was
Speaker 3: part of the heart of their defense arguments in the
Speaker 3: first trial. Basically, the defense was just cut off at
Speaker 3: every way they turned. In the end, the jury was
Speaker 3: only allowed to vote for first or secondary murder as verdicts.
Speaker 3: They came back with a first three murder conviction at
Speaker 3: the end of the second trial, and then following that conviction,
Speaker 3: then they held after the guilt phase of the trial,
Speaker 3: they held the penalty phase, and that was three weeks
Speaker 3: in April twenty April nineteen ninety six, and the jury
Speaker 3: then had only two decisions. They could vote for life
Speaker 3: without parole or they could vote for the death only.
Speaker 3: So in that penalty phase, the judge did allow the
Speaker 3: defense to put on all these witnesses that the first
Speaker 3: trial juries had heard during the guilt phase of the trial.
Speaker 3: At the end of the penalty faced the second trial
Speaker 3: jury voted for life without parole.
Speaker 2: And you say that you understand. The reason why they
Speaker 2: voted for life without parole was part of the reason
Speaker 2: of the sexual abuse, which ordinarily would have been in
Speaker 2: the trial itself.
Speaker 3: Well, it was such a ludicrous moment when David Kahn,
Speaker 3: the lead prosecutor in the second trial, said, in his
Speaker 3: closing argument in the second trial, you've heard absolutely no
Speaker 3: evidence about sexual abuse in this trial. And it was
Speaker 3: so ludicrous of him to say that, because the reason
Speaker 3: the jury had never heard any evidence of sexual abuse
Speaker 3: was that he had opposed any evidence being allowed in
Speaker 3: And as I said, it was just a joke, you
Speaker 3: know what he was doing. What was very interesting was
Speaker 3: the brothers have exhausted all their state and federal appeals.
Speaker 3: In their last federal appeal in front of the Ninth
Speaker 3: Circuit here in Pasadena in two thousand and five, one
Speaker 3: of the Justices, Alex Kazinski, actually said during the hearing,
Speaker 3: which anybody can hear online can hear the audio. Justice
Speaker 3: Kazinsky said that he believed the second trial had been
Speaker 3: rigged and there had been collusion between the DA's office
Speaker 3: and the trial judge to conduct the brothers in the
Speaker 3: second trial. And part of this whole story is the
Speaker 3: politics that were going on in LA over the years
Speaker 3: late eighties, early nineties, and if you remember the DA's office,
Speaker 3: they were losing all the high profile trials. Started with
Speaker 3: the McMartin Precho McMartin preschool trial in the late age,
Speaker 3: then the Rodney King beating trial where four laped officers
Speaker 3: were acquitted, and that set off the LA riots in
Speaker 3: ninety two, and then they Lostnendus one, and then they
Speaker 3: lost OJ. OJ was quitted in ninety five, and then
Speaker 3: the second Mendas trial had the misfortune and the bad
Speaker 3: timing to start about a week after the OJ acquittal.
Speaker 3: So in addition to the DA's office, the general public
Speaker 3: was like, you know what's wrong here? You know, can
Speaker 3: this DA's office ever convict anybody anything in these high
Speaker 3: profol trial cases. So everything was really weighed heavily against
Speaker 3: the men's brothers in the second trial.
Speaker 2: Needless to say, people know what happened, and they were imprisoned,
Speaker 2: and they were given life without the possibility of parole,
Speaker 2: and as you mentioned, all their federal and all their
Speaker 2: appeals were exhausted. Let's talk about your book, the Menendez
Speaker 2: murders when it came out before we talk about this
Speaker 2: new evidence you uncovered and the time they elapsed over
Speaker 2: that period and what the Menendez brothers, separated in different
Speaker 2: prisons did with their time.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, so Eric lahmannendas were actually sent to separate perissons,
Speaker 3: even though they'd have to be placed at the same facility,
Speaker 3: and the other county Promotion Comport had recommended they'd be
Speaker 3: sent to the same facility. And on the day they
Speaker 3: were sentenced July second, nineteen ninety six, the Beverly Hills
Speaker 3: Police filed a last man in motion and they said
Speaker 3: the brothers had been coached conspirators in a crime, so
Speaker 3: they should be sent to separate facilities. Because they might
Speaker 3: conspire to commit a crime in the future. And so
Speaker 3: for twenty two years, Eric and Lahomanendez never saw each other,
Speaker 3: never talk to each other. It was, you know, really
Speaker 3: a sad situation for them because they were extremely close.
Speaker 3: Then in April of twenty eighteen, they were reunited. There
Speaker 3: now for since then they've been at the same prison,
Speaker 3: r J down in prison near San Diego. And my
Speaker 3: book came out originally in September twenty eighteen, and then
Speaker 3: it was re released a few weeks ago on September tenth,
Speaker 3: twenty twenty four. And we have new evidence from the documentary.
Speaker 3: I was co EP and co creator of Menandus plus
Speaker 3: Menudo Boys Betrayed, and part of that new evidence is
Speaker 3: the connection between Jose Menendez and the Latin boy band Menudo,
Speaker 3: and a former member of Menudo, Roy Roussello, was the
Speaker 3: primary character in our documentary, and he came forward for
Speaker 3: the first time and talked about how he had been
Speaker 3: raped by Jose Menendez when he was fourteen years old
Speaker 3: and in the band.
Speaker 2: Let's get to the circumstances in which you were in
Speaker 2: contact with Marta Cano and this incredible discovery of a
Speaker 2: letter to Andy.
Speaker 3: So the second piece of major evidence that I discovered
Speaker 3: besides the news story. In March twenty eighteen, I was
Speaker 3: on the final deadline from my book and I was
Speaker 3: spending a few days interviewing March Cano at her home
Speaker 3: in Florida and her son, Andy had sadly passed away
Speaker 3: from an accidental sleeping bill overdose in two thousand and three,
Speaker 3: and his bedroom had been untouched since he died, and
Speaker 3: she told me she had an addresser full of his
Speaker 3: personal papers, and I wanted to go through it, and
Speaker 3: I was welcome to it. Within fifteen minutes, I found
Speaker 3: a that was written in late nineteen eighty eight, about
Speaker 3: nine months before the murders. And Eric Mannus wrote this
Speaker 3: letter to Andy Cano, and in the it was about
Speaker 3: five pages long. It talked about all kinds of things,
Speaker 3: but in the second page there's a key paragraph where
Speaker 3: he's complaining about the ongoing sexual abuse by his father
Speaker 3: that was still going on. And so as soon as
Speaker 3: I saw the letter, I realized immediately this could be
Speaker 3: a major piece of hard evidence that could have a
Speaker 3: serious impact on the case. And so we actually held
Speaker 3: a book another month and I was able to write
Speaker 3: a new chapter about The letter was the closing chapter
Speaker 3: of the book, and I hand carried that letter myself
Speaker 3: on a plane from West brom Beach to Oakland to
Speaker 3: see the appellate attorney Cliff Gartner, and Cliff Gardner locked
Speaker 3: a letter in his safe. And now the brothers through
Speaker 3: their televison journeys at Governor and Mark Ercros while the
Speaker 3: rit of Habeas corpus the day after our documentary Menezes
Speaker 3: Meneu came out in May of twenty three, and the
Speaker 3: habeas position the purpose is to vacate the brother's nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety six convictions based on new evidence that was not
Speaker 3: available at the time Eric Delile were on trial in
Speaker 3: nineteen nineties.
Speaker 2: Now let's get to Netflix's Monsters and a Newsweek article
Speaker 2: that just happened, just occurred a few days ago, and
Speaker 2: it's entitled Menendez Brothers Reporter slams Monsters fictionalized Inaccuracies. So
Speaker 2: let's get to the major inaccuracies that are portrayed in
Speaker 2: Netflix Monsters and your opinion about Ryan Murphy and his
Speaker 2: inclusion of some of these fictional laws things that are
Speaker 2: part a major part of this film series.
Speaker 3: Well again, Monsters is a scripted fictionalized series very loosely
Speaker 3: based on real facts. But there are some really egregious
Speaker 3: scenes in that TV show, And the problem is that
Speaker 3: most people, most viewers actually don't know the difference between
Speaker 3: a TV show, a scripted series, and a documentary that
Speaker 3: goes with the facts. And so the problem with Monsters.
Speaker 3: The most outrageous scene is that Eric Lahman and has
Speaker 3: had an ancestuous relationship that is false. That never happened.
Speaker 3: I know that never happened. You know, it might have
Speaker 3: come from a rumor from Dominic toun, but Ryan Murby
Speaker 3: said that he relied on the reporting and the articles
Speaker 3: of Dominic Gunn and those articles were full of rumors
Speaker 3: and innuendo and falsehoods. So get let me give you
Speaker 3: two examples of things that were totally false in that series,
Speaker 3: the opening two scenes. The opening scene has Eric Lyle
Speaker 3: writing in a limo on the way to a memorial
Speaker 3: service at the Director's Guild on the Sunset Strip in
Speaker 3: la and Lyle is talking about that he's wearing his
Speaker 3: father's shoes and he's flexing a pair of brown test
Speaker 3: and loafers, And in reality, that was based on the
Speaker 3: testimony of a woman named Margie Eisberg, who was Jose's
Speaker 3: personal assistant at Live Entertainment, And I found out that
Speaker 3: I was working for one of the local LA's TV
Speaker 3: stations covering the second trial, and I found a videotape
Speaker 3: and it showed Lyle walking into the DGA memorial service
Speaker 3: and he was wearing a pair of green cowboy boots. So,
Speaker 3: in other words, I believe Margie Ice were totally made
Speaker 3: up that whole story about I'm wearing my father's shoes.
Speaker 3: You know, I've grown into it, you know, I you know,
Speaker 3: that's what I'm doing. The second scene in the series
Speaker 3: was about Eric is watching a TV movie about the
Speaker 3: Billionaire Voice Club and he actually says gee, and Lyle
Speaker 3: walks in the room and Eric says, Gee, why don't
Speaker 3: we come our parents like the guys in the Billionaire
Speaker 3: Voice Club movie? And the only problem with that is
Speaker 3: the Billionaire Voice Club mini series ran on two nights
Speaker 3: in April July of nineteen eighty nine, and I found
Speaker 3: out that onloadch two nights, Eric Lyle were actually at
Speaker 3: a tennis camp in Tampa, Florida, and I interviewed the
Speaker 3: director of the tennis camp and he told me that
Speaker 3: everybody camp had to be in their rooms with their
Speaker 3: lights out at nine o'clock every night. So the Billionaire
Speaker 3: bots Plumb mini series ran from nine to eleven PM
Speaker 3: on NBC Network nationally on those two nights. So in
Speaker 3: other words, there's no way that the brothers saw that movie.
Speaker 3: And so that's about as inaccurate as you can get.
Speaker 3: And that's actually in my book. What you might think
Speaker 3: that the writers from Monsters probably read my book. I
Speaker 3: know that some of the actors, did you know those
Speaker 3: are just I mean, that's the opening two scenes of
Speaker 3: the series, and they're dead wrong. So I actually binge
Speaker 3: the entire nine hour series the night it became available
Speaker 3: here in la I have a legal pad full of notes,
Speaker 3: you know that about the inaccurate scenes in the series.
Speaker 3: But once again, it's a scripted series, so they're under
Speaker 3: no obligation to tell a truthful story, and they didn't.
Speaker 3: They took just outrageous liberties, and what you see in
Speaker 3: that series, more than half of it is false.
Speaker 2: It's also the utter portrayal of their again utter remorselessness
Speaker 2: over this crime, and it shows all kinds of scenes
Speaker 2: where you can only conclude that the portrayal is that
Speaker 2: they're brilliant actors, these two boys, including all of the
Speaker 2: testimony at trials at the first trial, but also that
Speaker 2: they are just remorseless, cunning, pre medic state killers.
Speaker 3: That they are monsters. Well exactly. I think the actors
Speaker 3: Cooper Cutch and Nicholas Chavez are wonderful actors. I highly
Speaker 3: recommend episode five of the series, which is a solo
Speaker 3: camera and Cooper Cutch for thirty or five minutes where
Speaker 3: he's talking about the you see endured and he's talking
Speaker 3: to Leslie Abramson and the camera is focused in on
Speaker 3: Cooper Cutch and it is aemy worthy material. So there
Speaker 3: are moments in Monsters that are incredible, but overall it's
Speaker 3: just a joke. It's a fantasy. Most of the scenes
Speaker 3: never really happened. And that's the problem is that people
Speaker 3: don't know the difference scripted series versus documentary, and so
Speaker 3: people see things, you know, on a TV series and
Speaker 3: they just assume that that's the truth those events really happened.
Speaker 2: Now to counter that, Netflix has this practice of I
Speaker 2: don't know if the counter it, but Netflix has released
Speaker 2: October seventh.
Speaker 3: This interview is.
Speaker 2: October eighth, October seventh, they released the companion, the Netflix
Speaker 2: documentary called The Menendez Brothers and you have you're featured
Speaker 2: prominently in this documentary. What about that documentary? What do
Speaker 2: you think people that take the time to watch this documentary,
Speaker 2: what will they think?
Speaker 3: Well, I believe that people that watch Monsters first and
Speaker 3: then they watch the Bananda's documentary are going to have
Speaker 3: whiplesh because they're going to go from one extreme to
Speaker 3: the other, you know, from Ryan Murphy's interpretation of the
Speaker 3: story based on you know, rumors and falsehoods to hearing
Speaker 3: the facts from the Vennis brothers. I shot a six
Speaker 3: hour interview for the documentary, and so I haven't seen
Speaker 3: it yet, but I know that I'm in it. I
Speaker 3: know the brothers talking to I've certainly seen all the
Speaker 3: posts on social media in the past couple of days.
Speaker 3: I believe it's an accurate telling of their story. So
Speaker 3: how strange that the same network and Netflix would have this,
Speaker 3: you know, bizarre scripture series come out September nineteenth, and
Speaker 3: then several weeks later that they would come out with
Speaker 3: a documentary that totally has a different point of view,
Speaker 3: But they did.
Speaker 2: I think it's ironic that the initial series, which reports
Speaker 2: are that about over twenty million people have viewed so far,
Speaker 2: and that's just a released on September nineteenth. You say,
Speaker 2: ironically the series, that the film series has brought attention
Speaker 2: to the fact that the brothers were sexually abused despite
Speaker 2: all of the other fabrications and portrayals that took you know,
Speaker 2: ample license in that film ironically has brought people to
Speaker 2: view sexual abuse as legitimate.
Speaker 3: Well, that's the silver lighting behind Monsters. That people are
Speaker 3: talking about Imanen's brothers, not only in the States but
Speaker 3: all over the world. And that's great because people are
Speaker 3: trying to Now people are interested in learning the actual
Speaker 3: facts about the case. There's been a severe backlash two Monsters.
Speaker 3: Ryan Murphy has been called out by not just me
Speaker 3: but other people about scenes that are totally inaccurate or
Speaker 3: just playing made up. So people are turning to books
Speaker 3: and documentaries and going back and finding out the facts
Speaker 3: of this case, and they're learning a very different story
Speaker 3: than Ryan Murphy.
Speaker 2: Per So, now give us the announcement. That must have
Speaker 2: surprised you because we were scheduled to have this interview
Speaker 2: on October third, and that was delayed because of the announcement.
Speaker 2: Tell us about this announcement and what it means to
Speaker 2: you and what it means to the brothers.
Speaker 3: Tell us about it. Well, it's incredible that La County
Speaker 3: DA George Gascone had a news conference a few days
Speaker 3: ago and he announced that his office was seriously reviewing
Speaker 3: the evidence in the Habeas corporate petition that was filed
Speaker 3: in May twenty twenty three, the day after Menetta's plus
Speaker 3: Maneuver Boys Betrayed came out. Basically, George Gascone said, my
Speaker 3: office is carefully reviewing the new evidence. We may have
Speaker 3: a decision at the end of November about what we're
Speaker 3: going to do about this case. Now, the Menna's appellant
Speaker 3: attorneys are hoping that the brothers there will never be
Speaker 3: a third NN's trial. It's thirty years later, half the
Speaker 3: witnesses are dead or have to mention, Do the La
Speaker 3: County taxpayers really want to spend twenty twenty five million
Speaker 3: dollars to reconstruct a thirty year old case if you
Speaker 3: can even do that, of course not so. What the
Speaker 3: apoliticans journeys they're hoping for is that the brothers will
Speaker 3: be resentenced to time served and that they will be
Speaker 3: let out of prison. You know, it's been thirty four
Speaker 3: years and six months. That's more time than many people
Speaker 3: serve for committing horrible crimes against strangers in California. And
Speaker 3: I believe Eric and Lyolmanendez killed their lifelong abusers. So
Speaker 3: it's time to send them home. It's time to let
Speaker 3: them out, and I hope that that happens soon.
Speaker 2: It seems from the announcement though, that Gascon is talking
Speaker 2: about that for the conditions for them to be released
Speaker 2: also included proof of their rehabilitation behind bars, and as
Speaker 2: you write in this book, they have exemplified model inmates
Speaker 2: in prison and have done things to benefit others in
Speaker 2: prison and have a absolutely impeccable record behind bars.
Speaker 3: Well, Eric and Letelmanendez have become really valuable members of
Speaker 3: their inmate community. They teach classes. They are involved in
Speaker 3: what's called the Green Space Project, where they are painting
Speaker 3: an incredible, incredibly large mural on the walls of their
Speaker 3: prison yard at Echo at RJ Downan, and they're also
Speaker 3: constructing a garden all from the donated materials in the
Speaker 3: center of this prison yard which used to be brown dirt,
Speaker 3: and it's going to be like an oasis with fountains
Speaker 3: and greenery, and the prison officials have told me the
Speaker 3: Grin Space project has not only had a positive impact
Speaker 3: impact on the inmates, but it's also having a positive
Speaker 3: impact on the prison step, the guards and the staff
Speaker 3: at the prison, and so also both brothers are counseling
Speaker 3: other inmates in their prison community who have our survivors
Speaker 3: of sexual abuse when they were kids, and so Eric
Speaker 3: Lahmanand's have devoted their life to helping other people. And
Speaker 3: it's amazing what they've done. And I think it's an
Speaker 3: example of what will happen if they are let out
Speaker 3: that I believe they will. They will to devote their
Speaker 3: lives to helping other people. When I met them, they
Speaker 3: were eighteen twenty one. Now they're fifty three and fifty six.
Speaker 3: As I said a moment ago, it's time to let
Speaker 3: them out, set them free, let them go home to
Speaker 3: their families, and they are still going to have very
Speaker 3: productive lives and still be of service and helping people.
Speaker 2: Yes, so I think you and Lyle and Eric and
Speaker 2: the family that's been supportive of the brothers will be
Speaker 2: highly anticipating the decision November twenty six. I want to
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for coming on and talking about
Speaker 2: the Menendez murders, your updated edition, the shocking, untold story
Speaker 2: of the Menendez family and the killings that stunned the nation,
Speaker 2: including your incredible brucial evidence that has been the catalyst
Speaker 2: for this new hearing. I believe, Robert. Can you tell
Speaker 2: us about your website and if you can do any
Speaker 2: social media for people that want to find out more
Speaker 2: about this case and your work.
Speaker 3: Sure. I have a website title is url is Menendez
Speaker 3: Murders dot com. I'm on Twitter, my handle is at
Speaker 3: Menendez Rand. I'm on Instagram and TikTok at. I'm Robert Rand.
Speaker 3: I post daily on Instagram and I'm very active on Twitter.
Speaker 3: But I basically do a blog daily about the latest
Speaker 3: in the case. So people are welcome to follow me
Speaker 3: on social media and keep up on, you know, inside
Speaker 3: information and the latest on the case. That sounds great.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Robert Rand for coming on and
Speaker 2: talking about the Menendez murders, updated edition, the shocking, untold
Speaker 2: story of the Menendez family and the killings the stunn
Speaker 2: the nation. Thank you so much for this interview, and
Speaker 2: you have a great evening and good night.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it, Ben,
Speaker 3: thank you so much. Good Night, good night,