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Speaker 6: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 6: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 6: written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker, DTK. Every
Speaker 6: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 6: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 6: host journalist and author Dan Zupansky, Good Evening, a successful
Speaker 6: entertainment executive making two million dollars a year his former
Speaker 6: beauty queen wife. They're two sons on the fast track
Speaker 6: to success, but it was all a facade. The killing
Speaker 6: of Jose and Kitty Menendez on a quiet Sunday evening
Speaker 6: in Beverly Hills didn't make the cover of People magazine
Speaker 6: until the arrest of their sons seven months later, and
Speaker 6: the case developed an intense cult following. When the first
Speaker 6: Menendez trial began in July nineteen ninety three, the public
Speaker 6: was convinced that Lyle and Eric were a pair of greedy,
Speaker 6: rich kids who had killed loving the voted parents, but
Speaker 6: the real story remained buried underneath years of dark secrets
Speaker 6: until now. Journalist Robert Wren, who originally reported on the
Speaker 6: case for the Miami Herald and Playboy, has followed the
Speaker 6: Menendez murders from the beginning and has continued investigating and
Speaker 6: interviewing key sources for twenty eight years. Rand is the
Speaker 6: only reporter who covered the original investigation as well as
Speaker 6: both trials. With unparalleled access to the Menendez family and
Speaker 6: their history, including interviews with both brothers before and after
Speaker 6: their arrest, Rand has uncovered extraordinary details that certainly would
Speaker 6: have changed the fate of the brother's first degree murder
Speaker 6: conviction and sentencing to life without parole. Rand shares these intimate,
Speaker 6: never before revealed findings, including a deeply disturbing history of
Speaker 6: child abuse and sexual emolestation in the Menendez family going
Speaker 6: back generations, and the shocking admission O. J. Simpson made
Speaker 6: to one of the Menendez brothers when they were inmates
Speaker 6: at the La County Men's Central Jail. The book that
Speaker 6: we're featuring this evening is The Menendez Murders, The shocking,
Speaker 6: untold story of the Menendez Family and the killings that
Speaker 6: stunned the nation, With my special guest journalist and author
Speaker 6: Robert Rand. Welcome to the program and thank you very
Speaker 6: much for greeing this interview.
Speaker 3: Robert Rand Hello, Dan, thank you very much for having
Speaker 3: me on.
Speaker 7: Thank you very much. This is an incredible, incredible book,
Speaker 7: and finally we get to talk about this incredible case,
Speaker 7: one of the most shocking cases in true crime history.
Speaker 3: It's a very complex I was just going to say,
Speaker 3: it's a very complex story with many different levels, and
Speaker 3: it took me thirty years to really compile this entire story.
Speaker 7: Yes, incredible. Tell us where you were working professionally at
Speaker 7: the time this has occurred. August twentieth, nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 3: In August of nineteen eighty nine, I was a freelance
Speaker 3: journalist writing six thousand word feature stories for the Sunday
Speaker 3: magazine of the Miami Herald, and a few weeks before
Speaker 3: the night of the Menendus murders, I was in Las
Speaker 3: Vegas at a trade show for the home video business
Speaker 3: called the Video Software Dealers Convention, and I was researching
Speaker 3: just a general story about the home video business, which
Speaker 3: was an enormous business in the nineteen eighties. And the
Speaker 3: morning after Jose and Kitty died, I received a phone
Speaker 3: call in the newsroom at the Miami Herald from a
Speaker 3: friend of mine, Steve Apple, who was the editor of
Speaker 3: a trade magazine for the video business, and he told
Speaker 3: me that a high profile home video executive, Jose Menendez,
Speaker 3: and his wife had been blown away the previous evening
Speaker 3: in Beverly Hills, and I knew that. I quickly found
Speaker 3: out that Jose Menendez was Cuban American, and so that
Speaker 3: made it a potential interest to people in Miami. And
Speaker 3: the initial media coverage of the Menendez murders was really
Speaker 3: only on the national media radar for two or three
Speaker 3: days after the murders, and then it just there was
Speaker 3: some local LA coverage. There were seven months between the
Speaker 3: night of the murders and March eighth, nineteen ninety, when
Speaker 3: Lyle Menendez was arrested in Beverly Hills.
Speaker 7: Right now, what did you do to start these articles?
Speaker 7: I mean, obviously these articles progressed to where we are today,
Speaker 7: as he said, almost thirty years later, tell us how
Speaker 7: you started. What was the beginning of those articles and
Speaker 7: your research therein.
Speaker 3: Sure, well, after I got this phone call from my
Speaker 3: friend tipping me off, you know that Jose Menendez, a
Speaker 3: high profofile home video executive, had been killed, I did
Speaker 3: a little research and found out that he has sister
Speaker 3: who lived in West Palm Beach, about an hour and
Speaker 3: a half north of Miami. And this is nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 3: you know, before the internet, no cell phones. I got
Speaker 3: out the West Palm Beach phone book and I looked
Speaker 3: up the sister, Jose Menendez and called her up. And
Speaker 3: my call was five percent to make a condolence call
Speaker 3: and ninety five percent to possibly hit on her for
Speaker 3: a story. And after I introduced myself, Marta Cano, the
Speaker 3: aunt of Eric and Linel Menendez, immediately invited me to
Speaker 3: come up to West Palm Beach and meet her, and
Speaker 3: we spent four hours that afternoon discussing the Menenda's family history,
Speaker 3: which was a fascinating story. The family originally was from Spain.
Speaker 3: They had been very poor, became wealthy, lost everything, immigrated
Speaker 3: to Cuba, had no money, became successful, wealthy all over again,
Speaker 3: and then Castro came into power and they had to
Speaker 3: leave Cuba and the family restarted for a third time
Speaker 3: in the States. Jose Menendus arrived in the US at
Speaker 3: the age of sixteen. He had nothing. He had been
Speaker 3: leading a country club lifestyle, upper middle class, very comfortable
Speaker 3: lifestyle in Cuba, and suddenly he was living with distant
Speaker 3: relatives in an attic in northeast Pennsylvania, and once again
Speaker 3: in the States, the family became successful all over again.
Speaker 3: So I went back to my editor at the Tropic
Speaker 3: magazine Sunny Magazine of the Herald and said, look, we
Speaker 3: don't know much about this murder investigation, and the police
Speaker 3: were being very tight, but I said, but I said,
Speaker 3: this family has a very interesting story, and so I
Speaker 3: think we should do a biography of Jose Menendez Rags
Speaker 3: to Rich's Cuban American story ends in a terrible tragedy.
Speaker 3: And my editor liked that idea, and I began my
Speaker 3: initial reporting on the case.
Speaker 7: How athletic was Jose and how much of a factor
Speaker 7: was that in this story.
Speaker 3: Well, Jose Menendez was a star athlete who was actually
Speaker 3: a swimmer in high school in Pennsylvania, and he was
Speaker 3: also a tennis player, and so he was, you know,
Speaker 3: very athletic himself. And when his sons were born, he
Speaker 3: wanted his sons to become star athletes, and so he
Speaker 3: spent a lot of time with them. You know, he
Speaker 3: initially he was interested in them becoming competitive swimmers, and
Speaker 3: then he switched his focus and the folks and the
Speaker 3: brothers to tennis, and both brothers became nationally ranked tennis players.
Speaker 3: Was Aman used to wake them up at four in
Speaker 3: the morning and have them hit balls for three hours
Speaker 3: before they would go to school.
Speaker 7: When they were little kids, tell us about Mary Louise
Speaker 7: they called their kiddie, and how they met and their relationship.
Speaker 3: Well. Kitty Menendez was born in a suburb of Chicago,
Speaker 3: and she went to college at Southern Illinois University, and
Speaker 3: Jose and Kitty Menandez shared several classes. One of their
Speaker 3: favorite classes was a debate a debate class where they
Speaker 3: used to debate each other and they began a romantic
Speaker 3: relationship and they wanted to get married, but Jose was
Speaker 3: under eighteen and in Illinois you had to be eighteen
Speaker 3: to get married or you had to have the permission
Speaker 3: of your parents. And so Jose and Kitty Menendez Elope
Speaker 3: went to Indiana and didn't tell their family until after
Speaker 3: they were married. His father was somewhat upset. His father,
Speaker 3: whose nickname was Peppine his real name was also Jose,
Speaker 3: But Jose Men's father told them, you're too young to
Speaker 3: get married, and you know you shouldn't do this, but
Speaker 3: Jose had made up his mind decided he wanted to
Speaker 3: do it, and the young couple did get married, and
Speaker 3: then the family was happy after they kept the secrets
Speaker 3: for a few months, but the family was happy after
Speaker 3: everything came out.
Speaker 7: Now, tell us how they eventually get to again where
Speaker 7: he's this executive at Coronicle Pictures, producer of the Rambo
Speaker 7: and Terminator movies. Tell us how they get finally to
Speaker 7: where they are in Beverly Hills. What's the route?
Speaker 3: It's an interesting story because after Jose and Kitty Minas
Speaker 3: were married, they moved to New York City, where Jose
Speaker 3: was continuing school at Queen's College, and Jose and Kitty
Speaker 3: were broke. They really were just barely getting by. Kitty
Speaker 3: was doing some work as a substitute teacher. Jose was
Speaker 3: actually when he was in college, he was selling encyclopedias
Speaker 3: door to door. There was one anecdote I heard from
Speaker 3: the family in which he sold encyclopedia to a woman,
Speaker 3: an elderly woman, who after the day the evening after
Speaker 3: he sold it to her, he felt guilty. He didn't
Speaker 3: think she could really afford it, and he went back
Speaker 3: the next day and you took the encyclopedia back and
Speaker 3: gave refunded the woman her money. He was also working
Speaker 3: as a dishwasher at the twenty one Club in New York,
Speaker 3: and so they were really struggling financially. Jose graduated from
Speaker 3: Queen's College and was able to land the job with
Speaker 3: Cooper's what was then Cooper's Library and one of the
Speaker 3: big eight accounting firms, and from there he went through
Speaker 3: a couple other jobs as an executive with different companies,
Speaker 3: and then one of the biggest jobs in his career
Speaker 3: was when he became head of US operations for Hurtz Rannakar.
Speaker 3: And after a couple of years of success as Hurts RCA,
Speaker 3: the corporate owner moved Jose to one of the top
Speaker 3: executives with RCA Records, and so Jose was hoping to
Speaker 3: become the top executive, the CEO of RCA Records, and
Speaker 3: when that didn't happen, he pulled the cord on a
Speaker 3: golden parachute, walked away with a million dollars and began
Speaker 3: looking for some type of new work in the entertainment business.
Speaker 3: And one of the offers that came his way was
Speaker 3: to run the home video division of Cara Coole Pictures.
Speaker 3: Care Cole Pictures was one of the hottest independent studios
Speaker 3: in the nineteen eighties. They released the Rambo movies starring
Speaker 3: Sylvester Stallone. They released the famous Sharon Stone movie Basic Instinct,
Speaker 3: and in the nineteen eighties the home video divisions had
Speaker 3: become a gold mine for the studios. It was a
Speaker 3: new business. It was really kind of found money and
Speaker 3: that's the way people were consuming movies long before streaming.
Speaker 3: People had, you know, home had VCRs beta machines in
Speaker 3: their homes and played movies. And so Jose and Kitty
Speaker 3: Menendez had lived in Princeton, New Jersey for twenty years
Speaker 3: with their sons, Eric and Lyle, and they picked up
Speaker 3: the family and moved out to California. At one point,
Speaker 3: Jose Menendez talked with his wife Kitty and suggested that
Speaker 3: he and Eric come out to California and the Kitty
Speaker 3: and Lyle stay in Princeton. Lyle was about to start
Speaker 3: school at Princeton University and Kitty man and this was
Speaker 3: very involved in charitable groups and the community activities, but
Speaker 3: she quickly turned that down. So the entire family moved
Speaker 3: to Los Angeles, and initially for a year and a
Speaker 3: half they lived in the La suburb of Calabasas, which
Speaker 3: nobody had heard of in nineteen eighty nine on a
Speaker 3: national international level. But of course we've since, you know,
Speaker 3: known Calabasas as the home of the Kardashians.
Speaker 7: Right now, you talk about Mary Louise, and she was
Speaker 7: involved in some volunteer work, but she was not really
Speaker 7: pleased with the move from Princeton. She was pretty happy
Speaker 7: with her friends and her life there, wasn't she.
Speaker 3: That's correct. Kenny Menendez had, you know, lived in that
Speaker 3: community for twenty years. She had a lot of friends,
Speaker 3: she was involved in different activities. Jose Menendez. Jose Menendez
Speaker 3: had a sister, Terry Perolt, and her husband, Carlos Parolt,
Speaker 3: and they had the brals had four daughters, and they
Speaker 3: lived down the street from Menanda's. The two families were
Speaker 3: very close, and so for Kitty Menendaz, the idea of
Speaker 3: uprooting her life and moving to California after twenty years
Speaker 3: in Priston was really something she was not She did
Speaker 3: not really want to do that, but at a certain point,
Speaker 3: after some friction between I was saying Kitty, she did
Speaker 3: agree to move to Los Angeles. As I said, the
Speaker 3: family lived in Calabasas for about a year and a
Speaker 3: half and then Eric Menendez was involved in a fight
Speaker 3: at Calabasas High School. Eric was a star player on
Speaker 3: the Calabasas High tennis team and one day some members
Speaker 3: of the tennis team became involved in a fight with
Speaker 3: some gang members and there were some threats being made
Speaker 3: against the Menenda's family, and so that was one of
Speaker 3: the that Jose and Kitty decided to move to Beverly
Speaker 3: Hills and they purchased a mansion on the North Elm
Speaker 3: Drive in the fall of nineteen eighty eight and made
Speaker 3: that move to Beverly Hills.
Speaker 7: Now, how old was Eric at that time and where
Speaker 7: was he in terms of his schooling and where was Lyle?
Speaker 7: And there's four years almost four years difference in age,
Speaker 7: But tell us where they were age wise and education
Speaker 7: wise at that point what they were doing.
Speaker 3: Sure, well, in the fall of the nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 3: Eric Menendez was would have been seventeen years old, and
Speaker 3: he was he had been going to Calabasas High School
Speaker 3: and Lyle had just started his first year at Princeton,
Speaker 3: and I mentioned the gang fight that Eric was involved
Speaker 3: in as being one problem that was going on, you know,
Speaker 3: within the family. But there was another incident that took
Speaker 3: place in which Eric was involved in some burglaries in Calabasas,
Speaker 3: which he committed with a close friend and they were
Speaker 3: and actually Eric Menandez the first burgulary he was involved
Speaker 3: in the house where they committed the burglary was the
Speaker 3: home of the parents of a friend of Eric's and
Speaker 3: another friend of his who was involved in the burglary,
Speaker 3: Craig Signarelli, and the parents were out of town. They
Speaker 3: were in Europe on vacation, and Eric's friend whose parents
Speaker 3: were out of town, actually gave Eric and Craig the
Speaker 3: combination to his parents safe and they took quite a
Speaker 3: bit of property out of the house and include property
Speaker 3: worth about one hundred thousand dollars. And so then they
Speaker 3: decided to do a second burglary, and Lyle Menendas was
Speaker 3: very upset when he heard about this and he didn't
Speaker 3: want He was also concerned about the relationship between Eric
Speaker 3: Menendez and his best friend, Craig Signorelli. So Lyle actually
Speaker 3: was involved in a second burglary with Eric and overall
Speaker 3: and again this was the house of the parents of
Speaker 3: a friend of Eric Menenda's and overall over one hundred thousand.
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Speaker 3: Eighting plus dollars with property was taken in these burglaries,
Speaker 3: and eventually the La County Sheriff's office became involved. And
Speaker 3: because you know, there have been some talking among the
Speaker 3: kids at Calabasas High, Eric Mann was accused of taking
Speaker 3: part in these burglaries, but they were able to shield
Speaker 3: Lyle because he was over eighteen, and so Eric basically
Speaker 3: took the fall for both of them and was charged
Speaker 3: as a juvenile. And most of the property was returned
Speaker 3: and Jose Menendez were a check to cover the rest
Speaker 3: of the missing property. And that was another reason why
Speaker 3: the family moved from Calabasas to Beverly Hills, because this
Speaker 3: was very embarrassing for Jose and Kitty Menendez. And Jose
Speaker 3: Menendez actually had some thoughts in his head that he
Speaker 3: might run for political office in the future. His sister
Speaker 3: told me that he wanted to retire from the entertainment
Speaker 3: business in five or six years and run for the
Speaker 3: US Senate in Florida. So Jose you know, hired a
Speaker 3: high profile geraldchaliff and the burglary was the burglary case
Speaker 3: was took place in juvenile court and as part of
Speaker 3: the resolution of the burglary case, Eric Menandas was ordered
Speaker 3: to be evaluated by a therapist, and Kitty Menanda's therapist
Speaker 3: recommended the doctor by the name of Jerome Oziel to
Speaker 3: do that evaluation with Eric, and so doctor Oziel, who
Speaker 3: later plays a major role in the Menendez murder case,
Speaker 3: that was his initial contact with the Menendez family to
Speaker 3: prepare this evaluation for juvenile court, and doctor Ozield saw
Speaker 3: Eric Menendez alone in sessions, but Jose and Kitty Menendez
Speaker 3: had doctor Oziel has Eric Menanda's sign a release so
Speaker 3: that doctor Oziel could tell them everything that went on
Speaker 3: in the therapy session. And there were also some group
Speaker 3: sessions with the entire Menendez family. But this burgulary incident,
Speaker 3: along with the s gang fight that I mentioned both
Speaker 3: contributed motivated the family motivated Jose Menendez to decide to
Speaker 3: move the family from Calabasas to Beverly Hills, and so
Speaker 3: they actually made the move to Beverly Hills around Thanksgiving
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty eight, about eight months before August twentieth, nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty nine, the night of the murders.
Speaker 7: What did Jose say to was his boys in his
Speaker 7: obvious disappointment with them regarding his will.
Speaker 3: Well, in the spring of nineteen eighty nine, several months
Speaker 3: before the murders, Jose Menendez spoke with Carlos Berrault, his
Speaker 3: brother in law, who was the executor of his estate,
Speaker 3: and he told Barol that he wanted to remove Eric
Speaker 3: and Lyle from his will. He was frustrated with them,
Speaker 3: he was disappointed about the situation with the calabas burglaries,
Speaker 3: and he just you know, wanted wanted to make a
Speaker 3: change in his estate planning. The Jose also had discussions
Speaker 3: with his sister Martiano the in West Combach, Florida, and
Speaker 3: he wanted to you know, told her that he was
Speaker 3: going to be drawing up a new will. But Jose
Speaker 3: was a very busy entertainment executive and he never got
Speaker 3: around the following through on those plans to create a
Speaker 3: new will. And so that this was obviously an important
Speaker 3: issue and important information during this testimony during the brothers trials.
Speaker 7: Let's talk about August twentieth eighty nine, and you take
Speaker 7: us there in nineteen eighty nine, a Sunday night. But
Speaker 7: before we get that, there's a phone call to someone
Speaker 7: named Perry Berman. Again, I'll maybe get ahead of myself here.
Speaker 7: Tell us who Perry Berman is, and then tell us
Speaker 7: about the Sunday night, or pardon me, the Sunday in
Speaker 7: the day, what happens at the home of the Menendez home,
Speaker 7: and then tell us about Perry Berman.
Speaker 3: Sure. On Sunday, August twentieth, nineteen eighty nine, it was
Speaker 3: a beautiful, warm August afternoon. The Menanda's family was spent
Speaker 3: the day around the house. They lived in an eight
Speaker 3: thousand square foot mansion on the north Elm Drive, just
Speaker 3: below Sunset Boulevard in a very upscale section of Beverly Hills,
Speaker 3: and the Menendez mansion had an Olympic sized swimming pool
Speaker 3: behind the house, and there was also a tennis court
Speaker 3: since both brothers were nationally rereg tennis players and practicing frequently,
Speaker 3: so most of the day the family was around the
Speaker 3: house in the pool. The brothers were playing tennis, and
Speaker 3: at one point the Lyle Menandez had a phone call
Speaker 3: Perry Berman, a former tennis coach of the brothers and
Speaker 3: a friend of both brothers, and they talked about meeting
Speaker 3: up at a food tasting festival in Santa Monica, about
Speaker 3: twenty minutes west of Beverly Hills, near the beach, and
Speaker 3: so they made tenative plans to meet at this food festival.
Speaker 3: The brothers said they wanted to order Chinese food. Kidding
Speaker 3: In was cooking fish, she made dinner, and then the
Speaker 3: brothers left the house and went to see the movie
Speaker 3: Batman at a nearby movie theater, and that was basically
Speaker 3: the original narrative of you Know What the Brothers said
Speaker 3: took place. Perry Berman was at the food festival waiting
Speaker 3: to meet Eric and Lyle, and they never showed up,
Speaker 3: and about eleven thirty at night, Lyel Menendez called Perry
Speaker 3: Berman and said, where are you? You know, we're here
Speaker 3: in Santa Monica at the food festival, and Berman said, well, hey,
Speaker 3: It ended about ten o'clock and he said, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm just going to bed. Can we talk tomorrow? And
Speaker 3: Lyle was kind of frantic and he said, no, I
Speaker 3: need to talk to you right now. He said, I'm
Speaker 3: really concerned about if I should go back to Princeton
Speaker 3: and concerned about some issues with his father, and he
Speaker 3: really pushed and pleaded with Berman to meet the brothers
Speaker 3: right away. And initially Lyle asked Berman to come meet
Speaker 3: the brothers at the Menenda's mansion, and then Berman said, no,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to do that. He said, I'll meet
Speaker 3: you at the Cheesecake Factory restaurant. And so Berman went
Speaker 3: over to the Cheesecake Factory and the restaurant was just closing,
Speaker 3: the chairs were being put up on the table. And
Speaker 3: again this is nineteen eighty nine, so we have no
Speaker 3: cell phones. And so this restaurant was only about ten
Speaker 3: minutes away from the Menanda's mansion. So Berman decided to
Speaker 3: drive over to North elm Drive, and as he pulled
Speaker 3: up the street, he became very alarmed when he saw
Speaker 3: that the street was filled with police with flashing lights,
Speaker 3: and uh, the and and what what what happened was
Speaker 3: that Eric men in the initial story that Eric and
Speaker 3: Litlmanendez told the police, they said they had come home
Speaker 3: and walked in and were shocked to, uh, you know,
Speaker 3: find the bodies of their parents.
Speaker 7: You talk about that. The reason they what they had
Speaker 7: mentioned to Perry Berman is that they were going to
Speaker 7: drop by the house to pick up some uh Eric's
Speaker 7: I D fake I D so that he could drink,
Speaker 7: and that was the reason they were just going to stop,
Speaker 7: park the car outside the house, outside the gate, and
Speaker 7: then go into that house, and then they found this
Speaker 7: horror scene. You talk about the nine to one one
Speaker 7: call and then the and their reaction when the police
Speaker 7: do get there. Tell us a little bit about that,
Speaker 7: but also what the police failed to do in terms
Speaker 7: of normal procedure testing in a case like this.
Speaker 3: Well, Eric and Lylemanendez told the police that they, you know,
Speaker 3: came back from being out at the food festival and
Speaker 3: walked into the house and were you know, horrified and
Speaker 3: shocked and emotional when they found the dead bodies of
Speaker 3: their parents. And Lylmanandez made a call to nine one
Speaker 3: one at eleven forty seven pm the night of August twentieth,
Speaker 3: and he was emotional and could barely be understood as
Speaker 3: he told the nine one one operator, somebody killed my parents.
Speaker 3: And in the background of that dramatic nine one one call,
Speaker 3: you can hear Eric Menendez screaming, extremely emotional and at
Speaker 3: one point Lylmanandez, you know, turns away from the phone
Speaker 3: and is yelling at Eric, Eric, get away from them.
Speaker 3: And Beverly Hills is a community which is not used
Speaker 3: to having too many murder cases. In nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 3: Beverly Hills averaged two murders a year, and it's a
Speaker 3: small community. The police responded within a few minutes, and
Speaker 3: as they pulled up, you know, they were very cautious,
Speaker 3: as they would be in any crime scene. And the
Speaker 3: brothers were still in the house. And the police called
Speaker 3: the house and asked the brothers to come outside, and
Speaker 3: the brothers within thirty seconds came running out the front door.
Speaker 3: The police went in and began, you know, searching the house,
Speaker 3: discovered the bodies, and the brothers were extremely emotional, extremely distraught.
Speaker 3: Eric Menendez was down on the grass in front of
Speaker 3: the house, pounding the ground, you know, saying who did this?
Speaker 3: You know, I'm I'm going to kill them, you know,
Speaker 3: and just extremely overwhelmed Lyle Menandez was a little cover
Speaker 3: but clearly upset, and the brothers called. The first person
Speaker 3: the brothers called was their tennis coach, Mark Effernan, who
Speaker 3: lived in Santa Monica. He came over the house and
Speaker 3: then the officers told the brothers that they were going
Speaker 3: to take them to the police station to be interviewed
Speaker 3: by Sergeant Tom Edmunds. And one of the one of
Speaker 3: the things that happened that night was because of the
Speaker 3: police felt the brother's emotion with genuine and they were
Speaker 3: so distraught, the police did not perform gunshot residue tests
Speaker 3: on American Lyle Menendez. If the police had performed that
Speaker 3: test kind of a basic procedure Police one oh one.
Speaker 3: If the police had performed the GSR test, the Benana's
Speaker 3: brothers would have been arrested that night, but because the
Speaker 3: brothers were so distraught, the police didn't do it. The
Speaker 3: police believed that they were grieving sons. They were both
Speaker 3: interviewed at the police station and then at one point,
Speaker 3: at about five thirty in the morning, the brothers returned
Speaker 3: to the house in a taxi and they had gone
Speaker 3: out to the home of their tennis coach, Mark Kavnan.
Speaker 3: At about five thirty in the morning, the brothers returned
Speaker 3: to the house and they met Less Sol, the lead
Speaker 3: investigator for the Beverly Hills Police, and they told Sola
Speaker 3: that they needed to get inside the house because there
Speaker 3: was some tennis equipment they wanted to pick up, and
Speaker 3: they needed to get inside the house, and they also
Speaker 3: wanted to go inside. Eric car was parked on the
Speaker 3: street right outside, right in front of the house, and
Speaker 3: so Zoler told them, you know, they couldn't go in
Speaker 3: the house because it was an active crime scene. He
Speaker 3: asked them to come back in a few hours. The
Speaker 3: brothers returned about eight thirty in the morning and briefly
Speaker 3: went inside the house. But the primary reason they returned
Speaker 3: was they went into Eric's car and filled an athletic
Speaker 3: bag with shotgun shells and receipts from the purchase of
Speaker 3: two shotguns in San Diego several days earlier. And incredibly,
Speaker 3: in another mistake that the Beverly Hills police made, they
Speaker 3: never searched that car, even though it was sitting right
Speaker 3: outside of the house. If the police had searched that car,
Speaker 3: they would have found shotgun shells and receipts for two shotguns.
Speaker 3: And once again, that's it's likely that the brothers might
Speaker 3: have been arrested that night because of that.
Speaker 7: Absolutely, you write that what police did find in that
Speaker 7: home was that somebody had burst into the Menindez family
Speaker 7: room and began firing twelve Gage Mossberg shotguns and somebody
Speaker 7: had put to the barrel of to Jose's head and
Speaker 7: pulled the trigger, and Kitty had been found on the ground,
Speaker 7: and I guess what they determined was a gun was
Speaker 7: put near her mouth or near her head, and you
Speaker 7: write that every bone was broken in her face, and
Speaker 7: so they emptied their weapons. But the police at that time,
Speaker 7: like you mentioned that they could have had some incredible
Speaker 7: incriminating evidence, there was a definite lack of evidence otherwise
Speaker 7: at that crime scene, wasn't there.
Speaker 3: That's correct. This was a horrific crime scene. I've seen
Speaker 3: the crime scene video and some of the crime scene
Speaker 3: photographs which were played and displayed at the brothers trials,
Speaker 3: and it was just it was a one of one
Speaker 3: of the most terrible crime scenes that the detectives had
Speaker 3: ever encountered. Shotguns are, you know, make unbelievably large wounds.
Speaker 3: You know, there was blood, there was there was brain
Speaker 3: matter dripping from the ceiling when the police came in.
Speaker 3: Uh the uh, the the parents were literally blown away.
Speaker 3: As you mentioned, one of the one of the shotguns
Speaker 3: blasts was a point blank shot to the back of
Speaker 3: hose aminems Head and the police were, you know, had
Speaker 3: were really a tough time themselves processing this very bloody
Speaker 3: crime scene.
Speaker 7: Now, how do police proceed with their investigation? Obviously they
Speaker 7: have to go to the family. What did they find
Speaker 7: out from the family, And just for the sake of
Speaker 7: our audience, what does a family believe and are they
Speaker 7: supportive of the brothers after these murders of their family.
Speaker 3: Well, the family of course was shocked. The brothers didn't
Speaker 3: call the family until about ten or eleven the next morning.
Speaker 3: Family members are in shock. They all flew to California.
Speaker 3: All of the initial media speculation was that the murders
Speaker 3: were somehow related to the home video business. Jose Menendez
Speaker 3: had recently his company Live Entertainment, the home video division
Speaker 3: of Chemical, had recently taken over a company that had
Speaker 3: been had some connections to the mob. The origins of
Speaker 3: the home video business were actually in the adult film industry,
Speaker 3: and so there were many companies that even though they
Speaker 3: might release you know, mainstream studio movies, they also were
Speaker 3: releasing the softcore porn or hardcore porn, and so the
Speaker 3: initial media speculation was about that it was something related
Speaker 3: to Jose's business and Five days after the murders, the
Speaker 3: Wall Street Journal ran a headline hints of a mob rubout.
Speaker 3: The La Times ran a story in which they had
Speaker 3: a source in the La Count of shriffs Off that said,
Speaker 3: these murders stink of organized crime, and so that's what
Speaker 3: the family believed there was. The brothers were not suspects publicly,
Speaker 3: and the speculation about the media was fixated on, you know,
Speaker 3: that it was some sort of mob hit for several months,
Speaker 3: but in reality what happened was about ten days after
Speaker 3: the murders, an attorney representing the mother of a young
Speaker 3: girl that the brothers went to school within Calabasas called
Speaker 3: the Beverly Hills Police and suggested that the police should
Speaker 3: take a look at Eric and Lyle menendez.
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Speaker 7: You write about what Eric and Lyle in their questioning
Speaker 7: from police, had said about a potential motive and also
Speaker 7: about the character characterization of their father as beyond a
Speaker 7: tough guide to negotiate with, and some of his business
Speaker 7: practices were considered harsh. What exactly did they tell police
Speaker 7: which lent some credibility to the idea that this would
Speaker 7: have been someone that was targeting the father.
Speaker 3: Well, Lylemanendez spoke to the police about that his father.
Speaker 3: He actually the quote he used was his father had
Speaker 3: some shady people that he was working with and in
Speaker 3: contact with in his business. And so lyleman that has
Speaker 3: actually made the suggestion that these killings could be related
Speaker 3: to his father's business. He mentioned to the police that
Speaker 3: the family was getting phone calls at all hours of
Speaker 3: the day and night, that sometimes shady people would show
Speaker 3: up at the house. So Lyle was clearly trying to,
Speaker 3: you know, give that impression of the police that that
Speaker 3: was the direction they should look at Eric menandus was
Speaker 3: really emotionally distraught and could could really, you know, barely
Speaker 3: complete sentences in the initial interview the man of the murders,
Speaker 3: and then there were uh the police were over in
Speaker 3: New Jersey and uh to interview Jose's sister, Terry Brault
Speaker 3: and her husband Carlos, and uh just by accident, they
Speaker 3: this is about three weeks after the murders. Just by accident,
Speaker 3: Eric and lotulman and just walked into the house while
Speaker 3: they're interviewing the Brault and so the police did a
Speaker 3: second interview with the Menanda's brothers in New Jersey, in
Speaker 3: which you know, was obviously a calmer setting three weeks
Speaker 3: after after the deaths of Jose and Kitty, and again
Speaker 3: the you know, the brothers said they really had no idea, uh,
Speaker 3: you know what why these murders took place, but they did.
Speaker 3: Eric did mention, you know, that he had been involved
Speaker 3: in this gang fight. And during that second interview in
Speaker 3: New Jersey, Eric mentioned that he had a therapist named
Speaker 3: doctor Jero Moziel and that police should talk to him,
Speaker 3: and the police said, well, sure, we'd like to talk
Speaker 3: to doctor Rozil, but we would need you to give
Speaker 3: us a waiver because normally there's a privilege between a
Speaker 3: therapist and the patient. And Eric Menendez never ends up
Speaker 3: doing that.
Speaker 7: You talk about the what lyle does I believe in
Speaker 7: terms of contacts a computer maintenance business after he learns
Speaker 7: that his relative Carlos Barrault was going to search a
Speaker 7: computer looking for files related to the will because he
Speaker 7: was privy to what ose has idea of changing that will?
Speaker 7: When I believe I will finds out about this, tell
Speaker 7: us what he does in terms of hiring this company.
Speaker 3: Sure, several days after the deaths of joseing Kitty, the
Speaker 3: family was out in California and they were frantically looking
Speaker 3: all over the house trying to find a copy of
Speaker 3: Jose and Kitty's will. The you know, I mentioned the
Speaker 3: earlier that Carlos Berrault had had a conversation with Jose
Speaker 3: in the spring of eighty nine, a few months before
Speaker 3: the murders about removing the brothers from the will and so,
Speaker 3: but nobody nobody knew, if you know, a new will
Speaker 3: had actually been created. And at one point the the
Speaker 3: Jose Kitty had a one of the old original Apple
Speaker 3: computers in their bedroom and so, I'm sorry, it was
Speaker 3: an IBM computer, and so they wanted to They took
Speaker 3: a look at the computer the selves and couldn't figure out,
Speaker 3: you know, how to get into the files, and so
Speaker 3: they made arrangements for somebody to come and try to
Speaker 3: look at the computer. Lylemanandas was aware of this, and
Speaker 3: before the Barraltz computer expert came over. Lyleman and has
Speaker 3: opened the Yellow Pages, called a company and had a
Speaker 3: man called the local la company, and had a man
Speaker 3: come over. He told that man that he was going
Speaker 3: to sell the computer and he wanted to erase the
Speaker 3: hard drive, and the brothers were particularly interested. There were
Speaker 3: four files titled Eric Lyle, Will and Menendez, and the
Speaker 3: brothers were extremely interested in those four files. But it
Speaker 3: turned out there were only about fifty or one hundred
Speaker 3: characters in each of those files. So there was no
Speaker 3: new will on the computer. And even if there had
Speaker 3: been a will or draft of a will on the computer,
Speaker 3: I'm not sure that would have been a legal document,
Speaker 3: since it would have just been a file on a
Speaker 3: computer and not a signed, notarized document. So Lyle told
Speaker 3: the computer expert that he called that he hired, that
Speaker 3: he was selling a computer to please erase everything off
Speaker 3: the hard drive. So a couple of days later, another
Speaker 3: computer expert shows up at the house, the man who
Speaker 3: had been hired by the family, and he goes to
Speaker 3: take a look at the computer and the entire hard
Speaker 3: drive is rased, and so later that obviously became a
Speaker 3: significant piece of evidence for the prosecution.
Speaker 7: Also, you talk about right after this, in terms of
Speaker 7: suspicious behavior, that they had gotten a two hundred and
Speaker 7: fifty thousand dollars insurance policy claim given to them almost immediately.
Speaker 7: What was the will estimated at that was originally from
Speaker 7: anything that anybody knew, all going to go to these brothers.
Speaker 3: Right well, well, just to finish the thought on what
Speaker 3: happened with the will at one point, so nothing is
Speaker 3: on the computer. When the Kylieperrault, the executive executive estate
Speaker 3: as a computer expert at the house and he finds
Speaker 3: that the hard driver's wipe cleane. The family continued searching
Speaker 3: in the house and at one point they found a
Speaker 3: will assigned will in a drawer in the parents' bedroom,
Speaker 3: and it was that will was created in nineteen eighty
Speaker 3: and it left everything to the brothers. The family really
Speaker 3: had no suspicion and no thought that the brothers could
Speaker 3: have been involved in any way in their parents' murder,
Speaker 3: and the family in the media, the media kept repeating
Speaker 3: that the family estate was worth fourteen million dollars. The
Speaker 3: reality is that the family estate was worth somewhere in
Speaker 3: the neighborhood of sixty eight million dollars. That's still a
Speaker 3: lot of money. But they had a house in Calabasas
Speaker 3: that they were doing a reconstruction on, and they also
Speaker 3: owned a house in Beverly Hills. So really jose and
Speaker 3: And was kind of heavily leveraged, and so five weeks
Speaker 3: after the murders, the brothers got together with their aunt,
Speaker 3: who was back in California from Florida, and she told
Speaker 3: them that they were the beneficiaries of a life insurance policy,
Speaker 3: which the brothers did not know anything about until that day,
Speaker 3: five weeks after the murders, and so five weeks said
Speaker 3: for the murders, each brother received a check for a
Speaker 3: quarter million dollars in cash, and the brothers actually never
Speaker 3: got their hands on any of the money from the
Speaker 3: Menandez estate. There was a loan made from the estate
Speaker 3: to Lyle when he purchased a chicken Wing restaurant in Princeton,
Speaker 3: but the brothers each get a quarter million dollars in
Speaker 3: the bank accounts, and they began to go out spending
Speaker 3: a lot of money. Lyle bought a new Porsche Eric
Speaker 3: part cheap. Lyle bought Rolex for himself and a Rolex
Speaker 3: for Eric, and they were traveling all over the country
Speaker 3: on Mgmayor, which was a upscale, small airline back then.
Speaker 3: And the one of the things that people don't always
Speaker 3: know about the Menanda's family is because the brothers were nation,
Speaker 3: they were at tennis players josem and Andus had given
Speaker 3: each brother an American Express card and he allowed them
Speaker 3: to charge up to ten thousand dollars a month. So
Speaker 3: this was an upper class family. They were used to
Speaker 3: spending a lot of money. The brothers were used to
Speaker 3: spending a lot of money, So the fact that they
Speaker 3: continued spending money after their parents' deaths was actually not
Speaker 3: something that seemed unusual to the family members. And you know,
Speaker 3: one of the things the media after the brothers were
Speaker 3: arrested was entirely focused on eric a Lahoman and as
Speaker 3: went on this crazy spending spree after they killed their parents,
Speaker 3: and the reality was that they had spent a lot
Speaker 3: of money before their parents died. So and one of
Speaker 3: the things that you know, I like to bring up
Speaker 3: to people is if you were eighteen years old and
Speaker 3: somebody handed you a quarter milli million dollars in cash,
Speaker 3: to me, the surprise would be if he didn't go
Speaker 3: out and buy a new car, and buy some fancy
Speaker 3: clothes and buy a watch. So the spending spree evidence
Speaker 3: was never that critical to me in my evaluation of
Speaker 3: the case. And one of the most interesting factoids about
Speaker 3: the case is that in August of ninety two, one
Speaker 3: year before the brothers went on trial, prosecutors presented evidence
Speaker 3: to an La County grand jury, evidence of murder for
Speaker 3: financial gain, evidence a murder for financial gain. The grand
Speaker 3: jury did not indict the men and his brothers on
Speaker 3: those charges of murder for financial gain. But in spite
Speaker 3: of the fact that the grand jury did not return
Speaker 3: that indictment, the prosecution grabbed onto that as their theme
Speaker 3: because the general public hates the rich, and the prosecution
Speaker 3: decided and the media had picked up on that theme.
Speaker 3: One of the interesting elements of the whole Menendez story
Speaker 3: is how the media back in the early nineteen nineties
Speaker 3: the media had such an impact on high profile trials. Again,
Speaker 3: this is years before the Internet, years many years before
Speaker 3: social media, and so back then, when the mainstream media
Speaker 3: set an agenda in your case that was basically it
Speaker 3: you could stick a fork in it, you were done,
Speaker 3: you were cooked. And that's what happened with Eric and
Speaker 3: Lyle Menendez. They became the greedy rich kids from the
Speaker 3: first week they were arrested, and the media sucked with that.
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Speaker 7: about how the eventually soon or not so soon, the
Speaker 7: two are arrested and why, and then take us to
Speaker 7: the trial, because, as we talked about in the introduction,
Speaker 7: there's two trials, and there's so much and it's such
Speaker 7: a complicated case. Let's get to how they were arrested
Speaker 7: before we start talking about the first trial.
Speaker 3: Sure, so, after the after the brothers received this insurance payout,
Speaker 3: they were spending a lot of money. The Beverly Hills
Speaker 3: police actually had received this tip about ten days after
Speaker 3: the murders that they should look take a post look
Speaker 3: at the brothers, and I was I had just spent
Speaker 3: two months of reporting about the home video business in
Speaker 3: my working on a story for the Miami Herald, and
Speaker 3: so I reached out to all of those contacts that
Speaker 3: I was in touch with, and the basic consensus was
Speaker 3: that these killings had nothing to do with the home
Speaker 3: video business. And even though the media continued that speculation,
Speaker 3: I basically hit a wall, hit a dead end, and
Speaker 3: the reality was that the police were focused on the
Speaker 3: brothers and I came out to California two months after
Speaker 3: the murders, five months before the brothers were arrested. In
Speaker 3: my reporting for that biography about Faza Menendez, and I
Speaker 3: spent a couple of days with Eric and Lyle, and
Speaker 3: they were not suspects publicly, I had no reason to
Speaker 3: be suspicious of them, and we did over the course
Speaker 3: of two days. The brothers told me loving stories of
Speaker 3: how close knit the family was. They told me how
Speaker 3: much they missed the parents. They were emotionally appropriate, and
Speaker 3: as I said, I had no reason to be suspicious
Speaker 3: of them. The two days I spent with the brothers
Speaker 3: were the end of October nineteen eighty nine, and the
Speaker 3: second day I was actually with Eric Menendez alone. Lylemanendez
Speaker 3: did not want me to use tape recorder. I did
Speaker 3: audio tape the interview with Eric, and after we finished
Speaker 3: the interview, Eric actually, you know, invited me to come
Speaker 3: out and see the family's dream house in Calabasas, so
Speaker 3: he volunteered to spend more time with me. Nine days
Speaker 3: after I did that interview with Eric Menendez, he contacted
Speaker 3: his therapist, doctor Jeroosiel, and said he needed to come
Speaker 3: see him, and on that day, Halloween nineteen eighty nine,
Speaker 3: Eric Menendez confessed to doctor Ozel that he and Lyle
Speaker 3: were responsible for their parents' deaths. Doctor Oziel was shocked,
Speaker 3: you know. He had Eric call Lyle, who was passing
Speaker 3: out Halloween candy with his girlfriend at the Menanda's mansion,
Speaker 3: and Lylmanandez rushed over to doctor Rozel's office in Beverly
Speaker 3: Hills and was extremely upset with Eric was obviously concerned
Speaker 3: that doctor Rozel was going to go to the Beverly
Speaker 3: Hills Police and there was a very emotional, dramatic session
Speaker 3: with doctor Oziel and the two brothers. At the end
Speaker 3: of that session, they Doctor Rozille walked the brothers to
Speaker 3: the elevator and Lyle Menendez shook the therapist's hand and
Speaker 3: said good luck, good luck, doctor Oziel, as in he
Speaker 3: was going to need some good luck. Rosil interpreted that
Speaker 3: moment as that Lyle Menendez was threatening to him. Normally,
Speaker 3: you have a privilege with a therapist. Then the therapist
Speaker 3: cannot reveal what goes out in a therapy session. There's
Speaker 3: an exception of that privilege under California law called the
Speaker 3: Terrosoft rule. If you threaten your therapist, or if you
Speaker 3: threaten you know, if you tell a therapist I'm going
Speaker 3: to go kill my girlfriend toorrow. Then he is allowed
Speaker 3: under California law to break the privilege until you know
Speaker 3: people around him, his family, you know that there's a
Speaker 3: potential danger, and also to possibly go to the police.
Speaker 3: But doctor Rozield did not go to the police. But
Speaker 3: he had a girlfriend by the name of Judelon Smith.
Speaker 3: Doctor Roziel was married with two young daughters. He had
Speaker 3: a girlfriend named Judelon Smith. And there's there's a there's
Speaker 3: a little confusion over what exactly happened the night that
Speaker 3: Eric Menendez confessed to doctor Rozield. Jude Lan Smith originally
Speaker 3: told police and in some media interviews that she had
Speaker 3: been in the waiting room of doctor Rozil's office on
Speaker 3: the night they both was confessed, and that she had
Speaker 3: overheard the confession as she was sitting down the hall.
Speaker 3: I don't believe that ever happened. Doctor Rozil let me
Speaker 3: into the office and let me see that the waiting
Speaker 3: room was quite a bit, quite a long distance from
Speaker 3: the therapy room, and when the door of the therapy
Speaker 3: room was closed and the door of the waiting room
Speaker 3: was closed, there's no way that she would have heard anything.
Speaker 3: I believe what happened is that doctor rosial gossiped with
Speaker 3: his girlfriend, and then that created a whole new set
Speaker 3: of problems. Because doctor Roziale was interested in kind of
Speaker 3: maintaining control over the Menanda's brothers, he talked to them
Speaker 3: about possibly becoming their financial advisor, and at one point
Speaker 3: they so they started having therapy sessions after the night confession,
Speaker 3: and doctor Roziel at one point a few weeks in said, look,
Speaker 3: I'm going to schedule two therapy sessions a day, one
Speaker 3: for each of you, five days a week. And he
Speaker 3: said told them, I don't care if you ever show up.
Speaker 3: And the brothers, you know, really obviously interpreted that and
Speaker 3: he was blackmailing them, and that was an accusation that
Speaker 3: the events made during the first trial. The family members
Speaker 3: kept getting these large bills from doctor Roziel. Their aunt
Speaker 3: Marxiano received one bill for ten thousand dollars and called
Speaker 3: Eric and said what's going on, And Eric said, oh,
Speaker 3: Aunt March, this is really important to therapy, so please
Speaker 3: just keep paying these bills. And in the background of
Speaker 3: all of this, the relationship between doctor Roziel and Judelan
Speaker 3: Smith was beginning to go sour and he had, as
Speaker 3: I mentioned, he had already revealed that the brothers had
Speaker 3: confessed to him. And so Smith started making threats, saying
Speaker 3: that she was going to go to the Battle of
Speaker 3: Hill's police and tell them the brothers had confessed. And
Speaker 3: at one point doctor Roziel recorded an hour long therapy session.
Speaker 3: He put quotes around that, and they had these tapes
Speaker 3: in a safe deposit box and as a way to
Speaker 3: ensure his safety, so Judlan Smith was aware that there
Speaker 3: was a tape of the brothers and also audio notes
Speaker 3: from some of these therapy sessions. And so, in a
Speaker 3: curious twist of the the o'zell Smith story, doctor Oziel
Speaker 3: and his wife moved Smith into their house with their
Speaker 3: daughters in an effort to keep the lid on her,
Speaker 3: to keep her from going to the police. And at
Speaker 3: some point several months later that whole situation blows up.
Speaker 3: Doctor Oziel and his wife, who was also a therapist,
Speaker 3: come home one night. All the furniture in their house
Speaker 3: is been rearranged, and doctor Zeal walks down the hallway
Speaker 3: and here's Smith talking to his eight year old daughter
Speaker 3: and telling her, I'm going to be your new mommy.
Speaker 3: And your mommy is going to be leaving y Ozell's
Speaker 3: kick Smith out of the house. And the next day
Speaker 3: she goes to the Beverly Hills Police and a day
Speaker 3: later Lyle Menenda. A day later, the Beverly Hell's Police
Speaker 3: show up at doctor Oziel's house for the search bar.
Speaker 3: They seize the audio tapes for his safe deposit box,
Speaker 3: and a few hours later, Lyle Menendez is arrested.
Speaker 7: Now right away, in this as you as we've just spoken,
Speaker 7: these tapes are crucial in terms of recorded evidence, incriminating,
Speaker 7: damning evidence. But there's the idea of admissibility and this
Speaker 7: idea of patient doctor confidentiality. When they get to trial
Speaker 7: and they're fighting about this, because this is the first fight,
Speaker 7: a serious fight that's can have consequence for both prosecution
Speaker 7: and defense. What happens in terms of that admissibility and
Speaker 7: those tapes.
Speaker 3: The menendous case did not go to trial for three years,
Speaker 3: as both sides, the prosecution and the defense, fought a
Speaker 3: very bitter battle over the admission of those tapes. As
Speaker 3: I mentioned, normally, under California law, you know there's a
Speaker 3: privilege with a therapist, and I also mentioned the exception
Speaker 3: to that privilege if you threaten your therapist, as doctor
Speaker 3: Oziel claimed had taken place. I don't believe that. I
Speaker 3: don't believe the Lielman unders did threaten him. I believe
Speaker 3: he was simply trying to save his career. But the
Speaker 3: issue of the admission of those tapes went all the
Speaker 3: way to the California Supreme Court, and shortly before the trial,
Speaker 3: the California Supreme Court ruled that the tapes could be
Speaker 3: admitted as evidence. The interesting thing about the trial of
Speaker 3: the case was that the Beverly Hills police did not
Speaker 3: really have a strong case without those tapes, But once
Speaker 3: the tapes were admitted as evidence, the defense had to
Speaker 3: completely shift and the case went from being a if
Speaker 3: those tapes had not been admitted, even though we would
Speaker 3: have been like the Emperor's new clothes. Everybody knew there
Speaker 3: were tapes and what was on those tapes. But if
Speaker 3: the tapes had not been admitted as evidence in the court,
Speaker 3: the defense would have been who done it? You know,
Speaker 3: you say, Eric LAHMANA has killed their parents, Let's see
Speaker 3: your evidence. And the prosecution did not have a strong case.
Speaker 3: But the tapes were admitted, and so the defense shifted
Speaker 3: and About two weeks before the trial, Leslie Abramson, the
Speaker 3: lead defense attorney with the blonde, curly hair, did an
Speaker 3: interview with the La Times in which she revealed that
Speaker 3: the defense was the brothers were going to tell a
Speaker 3: story of a lifetime of abuse and molization and a
Speaker 3: series of confrontations in the days before the murders that
Speaker 3: led up to the actual killing of Jose and Kitty Menendez,
Speaker 3: and the general public was a little confused. Most of
Speaker 3: the public believed because of the media coverage that Eric
Speaker 3: and Lyle Menendez's defense was we were abused, we were molested,
Speaker 3: and so therefore we get a pass, or that's why
Speaker 3: we killed our parents. The actual legal defense was we
Speaker 3: were in fear for our lives. There were these series, and.
Speaker 7: That's what you would call an involuntary manslaughter, where it's
Speaker 7: they have a fear of imminent danger. However, even though
Speaker 7: that's unreasonable in someone else's mind. Robert has just left
Speaker 7: us in mid question, and I was just talking to
Speaker 7: him about the distinction in the in the first trial
Speaker 7: in terms of the admissibility of two of the tapes
Speaker 7: of or four tapes, and two of those tapes were
Speaker 7: deemed admissible because they did speak to the threats that
Speaker 7: were the alleged threats that were made by the psychiatrist
Speaker 7: by o'zill. The distinction in court was that they would
Speaker 7: be able to a jury would be able to hear
Speaker 7: that information. And here we are with Robert again to explain.
Speaker 3: We got us.
Speaker 7: You were talking about we were talking about that admissibility
Speaker 7: and that distinction, and tell us more about that distinction
Speaker 7: and what was contained in those tapes and that had
Speaker 7: to for the prosecution had to readjust their strategy.
Speaker 3: Let me just give you a quick background of how
Speaker 3: that tape was created. So Eric Menendus confessed to doctor
Speaker 3: Rozel on October thirty first, nineteen eighty nine, and about
Speaker 3: six weeks later, doctor Ozel suggested that the brothers record
Speaker 3: an audio tape with him so that in the event
Speaker 3: that they were arrested at some point that they would
Speaker 3: be able to show that they had remorse for the
Speaker 3: killing of their parents. And Gerald Chliff, who was one
Speaker 3: of the criminal defense attorneys involved in the case early on,
Speaker 3: and he was Lyle's original defense attorney when he was arrested,
Speaker 3: Gerald Chaalliff actually had a meeting with doctor Rozel in
Speaker 3: his office for about an hour before they brought the
Speaker 3: brothers in and then Chliff left the room and Ozell
Speaker 3: recorded this hour long so called therapy session with the brothers.
Speaker 3: And in this sixty minute tape, which was obviously a
Speaker 3: key piece of evidence in the in the trials. Uh,
Speaker 3: the brothers are heard saying that they, you know, we're
Speaker 3: thinking about whether actually commit the murders for several days
Speaker 3: and you know, talked and it's just kind of a
Speaker 3: strange tape. Doctor Ozel is doing most of the talking.
Speaker 3: He's really kind of leading the brothers. There are some
Speaker 3: harsh moments. There was one moment where Lyle says, you know,
Speaker 3: I missed my mother, but I also miss my dog.
Speaker 3: If I could make such a gross analogy. Uh, the
Speaker 3: tape was really pretty damaging for the for the brothers defense.
Speaker 3: But in an interesting twist, there's so many interesting twists
Speaker 3: in this story. In an interesting twist, after the Supreme Court,
Speaker 3: you know, ruled that the tape could be admitted as evidence. Obviously,
Speaker 3: the prosecution was going to admit or present introduce the
Speaker 3: case the tape during their case, and the defense waited
Speaker 3: until both of the brothers testified and then the defense
Speaker 3: actually introduced the tape, and the reason they did that
Speaker 3: was because they knew it was going to be introduced
Speaker 3: one way or the other. So by the defense introducing it,
Speaker 3: then after the tape was played, they immediately put three
Speaker 3: or four therapy experts defense therapy experts on the stand
Speaker 3: to put their spin on this whole tape, and so
Speaker 3: that really kind of softened the blow of some of
Speaker 3: the negative things, you know, that were the jury was
Speaker 3: hearing in that one hour tape.
Speaker 7: What I mentioned with just the short interruption was the
Speaker 7: imminent danger. So what is exactly their defense in terms
Speaker 7: of they weren't abused, It wasn't revenge for the abuse.
Speaker 7: So what was their defense in that they presented in
Speaker 7: court in terms of this imminent danger that they thought
Speaker 7: they perceived as imminent.
Speaker 3: Well, the defense is called an imperfect self defense, and
Speaker 3: the abuse and mostations are a factor. They are an
Speaker 3: element in that type of defense. This defense was was
Speaker 3: really kind of unusual in nineteen ninety three. I have
Speaker 3: remember many years ago, basically in the late nineteen eighties,
Speaker 3: the women were starting to use a battered women's defense
Speaker 3: in cases where abused women had killed their you know,
Speaker 3: their husband or boyfriend. And so the menimous defense was
Speaker 3: kind of unique in that basically they were creating a
Speaker 3: new you know, kind of a tangent of that defense,
Speaker 3: and that was they were creating a battered child defense.
Speaker 3: It was important and important element for the defense attorneys
Speaker 3: to present the entire family history of jose and Kate Menendez,
Speaker 3: including their own childhoods. And the judge Stanley Weisberg, who
Speaker 3: had also been the judge on the famous Rodney King
Speaker 3: trial that led to the La Riots. Judge Weisberg gave
Speaker 3: the defense quite a bit of leeway in the first
Speaker 3: trial and allowed them to present up sixty five teachers, coaches,
Speaker 3: family friends, relatives, and so the jury heard quite a
Speaker 3: bit of evidence about the background of Eric and Lyle Menendez.
Speaker 3: And it's difficult for the public because the public, you know,
Speaker 3: when you're only here, you know, seeing a daily newspaper
Speaker 3: story or you're seeing a minute thirty TV story in
Speaker 3: the eleven o'clock news, it's really difficult to get into
Speaker 3: these complex issues. But the fact that half of the
Speaker 3: menendous jurors voted for manslaughter in the first trial, and
Speaker 3: half of the juris voted for murder tells you that
Speaker 3: evidence of the family history had a significant impact in
Speaker 3: the decision making of the jury. There were two juries,
Speaker 3: one for each other in the first trial.
Speaker 7: What happens in the first trial despite that family background
Speaker 7: being exposed, and despite the performances of the brothers at
Speaker 7: the trial as well, they were decent performances, if we
Speaker 7: can judge it by that. What happened with the jury?
Speaker 3: What was the decision? Well, the juries were split along
Speaker 3: gender lines for the most part. Basically almost all the
Speaker 3: women voted for manslaughter and almost all the men voted
Speaker 3: for murder. The deliberations for Lylemanendez went on for I
Speaker 3: think almost weeks, and neither jury could could reach decision,
Speaker 3: and so the trial ended with a mistrial too hung juries.
Speaker 3: And I interviewed all the jurors after the first trial,
Speaker 3: and all of the men told me some variation of
Speaker 3: a father would never do that to his sons. And
Speaker 3: I think twenty six years later, you know, I think
Speaker 3: society has evolved in that people are willing to accept
Speaker 3: the possibility that these this type of abuse does take place.
Speaker 5: But for the women who.
Speaker 3: Voted for manslaughter, they were quite you know, comfortable with
Speaker 3: their decision based on those sixty five defense witnesses that
Speaker 3: they saw, and the trial was broadcast live Gabble to
Speaker 3: Gable on COURTV, a new cable channel in the early nineties,
Speaker 3: and people that were watching that trial every day like
Speaker 3: a novella, you know they I think they people that
Speaker 3: you know, watched every moment of the trial. I think
Speaker 3: they had an understanding of, you know, where the truth
Speaker 3: was in this case.
Speaker 7: Now, you talk about the first trial when they finally
Speaker 7: get to trial, after the two mistrials, they finally get
Speaker 7: to trial and there's the involuntary manslaughter decision. So obviously
Speaker 7: that's what the jury believed and that was the decision.
Speaker 7: What happens after that? Why another trial?
Speaker 3: Well, so the first trial ended in a mistrial because
Speaker 3: neither jury there was one for each brother, neither jury
Speaker 3: could decide on a verdict. There was bitter fighting in
Speaker 3: each jury room, and a mistrial was declared. And within
Speaker 3: an hour after that mistrial was declared, LA District Attorney
Speaker 3: Gil Garcetti had a news conference and announced immediately that
Speaker 3: he was going to retry the menandas brothers because he
Speaker 3: he said, this is a case of first degree murder
Speaker 3: and you know, we're not going to settle this case.
Speaker 3: We're going back to trial again. And if this had
Speaker 3: not been a high profile media case, there would never
Speaker 3: have been a second trial. There would have been a
Speaker 3: plea agreement and that would have been in but the
Speaker 3: Li County there are politics in the loved in this story. Also,
Speaker 3: the l County District Attorney's office was on a terrible
Speaker 3: losing streak. They had lost a case called the McMartin
Speaker 3: molestation trial, they had lost the Rodney King trial, and
Speaker 3: they lost the OJ trial, so they really needed to win,
Speaker 3: and the second Menendez trial, unfortunately for the brothers, had
Speaker 3: The brothers had the misfortune of their second trial started
Speaker 3: the day after the OJ Simpson verdict in October nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety five. So the first thing the judge did was
Speaker 3: he kicked out the TV camera because he knew that
Speaker 3: would cut down on the media coverage. And then the
Speaker 3: judge perceived to basically reverse most of his evidence rulings
Speaker 3: from the first trial, and the defense had the heart
Speaker 3: of its case from the first trial cut out the defense.
Speaker 3: The judge was determined not to allow most of the
Speaker 3: witnesses the defense had put on in its first trial
Speaker 3: and the therapy experts and the witnesses that did testify,
Speaker 3: the judge severely limited their testimony. So in the second
Speaker 3: trial there was only one jury and the jurors heard
Speaker 3: a completely different set of evidence than the first trial jurors.
Speaker 3: The second trial was really much more like a traditional
Speaker 3: murder trial with forensic people, blood spatter experts. The prosecution
Speaker 3: brought in a company to do a reconstruction of the
Speaker 3: crime scene that went on for days and days. And
Speaker 3: this company that was called Failure Analysis, they had never
Speaker 3: done in reconstruction of a crime scene before, they had
Speaker 3: no background did that. There was the head of the company,
Speaker 3: Roger McCarthy, was a key prosecution witness in the second trial.
Speaker 3: Failure Analysis was known for recreating the Space Challenger shuttle
Speaker 3: disaster and doing a recreation of what happened that exon
Speaker 3: Veldi's oil spill. But they'd never been involved in a
Speaker 3: mirror case before, and so the second trial was very different.
Speaker 3: It wasn't on TV, much less media coverage, and the
Speaker 3: defense basically was limited in every direction that they tried
Speaker 3: to go. They weren't allowed to put on the heart
Speaker 3: of their case that had been the defense in the
Speaker 3: first trial, and then as the case was coming to
Speaker 3: a close, Judge Stanley Weisford put the final nail in
Speaker 3: the brothers coffin when he ruled that the jury could
Speaker 3: not consider manslaughter charges for them and he was not
Speaker 3: going to allow the defense to turn needs to argue
Speaker 3: for an imperfect self defense manslaughter verdict. And basically, as
Speaker 3: the second trial was ending, the jury was restricted to
Speaker 3: either secondary murder or first greed murder conviction. In March
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety six, the single jury returned a first screen
Speaker 3: murder connection. The first the jury returned to a first
Speaker 3: screen murder conviction for Eric and Lyle Menendez, and then
Speaker 3: that meant that there would be a penalty phase to determine.
Speaker 3: The jury had two choices based on the judges instructions,
Speaker 3: and those choices were the death penalty or life without parole.
Speaker 3: And then a penalty phase was held for several weeks.
Speaker 7: Right, and those things that happened that information was brought
Speaker 7: in the first trials was now in the mitigating stage
Speaker 7: in the penalty phase, wasn't it?
Speaker 3: That's correct? During the penalty phase, the judge did allow
Speaker 3: the defense to put on all of those witnesses that
Speaker 3: had been the heart of their case in the first trial,
Speaker 3: and it was very emotional testimony, very dramatic testimony, and
Speaker 3: the jurors voted for life without parole. And after the
Speaker 3: second trial, after the penalty phase verdict, some of the
Speaker 3: jurors were involved in a news conforts in the courtroom
Speaker 3: and several jurors said that they thought that death They
Speaker 3: thought life without parole was a harsher sentence on the
Speaker 3: death penalty. And several months after that I interviewed many
Speaker 3: of the jurors and several of them told me that
Speaker 3: if they had heard that family history in the guilty
Speaker 3: of the case, they would not have voted for murder.
Speaker 3: And so there have been accusations made that there was
Speaker 3: some sort of fix going on with the judge and
Speaker 3: the way everything rolled out and the brothers went through
Speaker 3: all their appeals. Their final appeal was at the Ninth
Speaker 3: Circuit Court in California, and one of the justices, Alex Kazinsky,
Speaker 3: said during that appeal hearing that he believed there had
Speaker 3: been collusion between Judge Weisberg and the DA's office, and
Speaker 3: yet Justice Kazinski still voted down the appeal.
Speaker 7: We talked about in the introduction about some information that
Speaker 7: came to you that you believe could have a bearing
Speaker 7: on possible because of new evidence of a potential new
Speaker 7: trial for these brothers. Talk about Marta Sano's son, Andy
Speaker 7: or it's Lyles's cousin. So tell us about Martin. Pardon me,
Speaker 7: Andy Samo. Mart and this letter that you discovered. How
Speaker 7: you discover this?
Speaker 3: Well, Martin Cano was, you know, my original source, my
Speaker 3: original entry into the Menandaz family. And we had been
Speaker 3: very close, you know, over the thirty years that we've
Speaker 3: been talking. And March Cano and is the sister of
Speaker 3: Jose Menendez. Joan vandermoln is the sister of Kiddy Menendez
Speaker 3: and I have been talking since nineteen eighty nine to Marta.
Speaker 3: In nineteen ninety, I met Joan, and I believe that
Speaker 3: the Menendez brothers are telling the truth about the abuse
Speaker 3: and the molestation that took place in the family. And
Speaker 3: I believe them not just based on their testimony, which
Speaker 3: is very compelling and the hundreds of hours of you know,
Speaker 3: interviews and phone calls we've had over the years, but
Speaker 3: I have had so much contact with the brothers to
Speaker 3: it's Marta and Joan, and I have learned so much
Speaker 3: about what was going on inside this family that this
Speaker 3: is not a story about two greedy, rich kids. The
Speaker 3: real story of the Menendez murders is a case of
Speaker 3: involving a family where there was intergenerational sexual abuse, and
Speaker 3: Jose Menendez was molested by his mother according to his
Speaker 3: sister Martinicano, and Kitty Menandez was molested by an older
Speaker 3: member of the family according to her sister Joan Vandermullen.
Speaker 3: And so one of the key witnesses for the defense
Speaker 3: was Martakano's son, Andy Cano. And Andy testified in both
Speaker 3: trials and he told the story of when he was
Speaker 3: ten years old and Eric was twelve, and one day
Speaker 3: they were out playing in the field. Eric Menendez asked
Speaker 3: Andy if his father, you know, ever touched his generals
Speaker 3: or massages genitals, and you know, Andy was ten years old.
Speaker 3: He was kind of surprised and he said no, and
Speaker 3: Eric talked about that something was going on with his father,
Speaker 3: but he made Eric swear with a pinky promise that
Speaker 3: he would never tell anybody, and immediately wanted to go
Speaker 3: tell his brother. Eric said no, my father will come
Speaker 3: me if you tell anybody. And so that was key
Speaker 3: testimony in both trials. And then as I was working
Speaker 3: on my book. I was close to the deadline of
Speaker 3: my book in March of twenty eighteen, and marcha Caiano
Speaker 3: had invited me over to her home in West Palm
Speaker 3: Beach and we were going through. She thought that there
Speaker 3: might have been some letters between Eric and Andy Cano,
Speaker 3: and so we were going through. Andy tragically died in
Speaker 3: two thousand and three. He was very traumatized by this
Speaker 3: case and he took an accidental overdose of sleeping pills.
Speaker 3: And so Martakano had boxes of Andy's possessions and papers
Speaker 3: in her attict, and we pulled some of those boxes
Speaker 3: down and started going through the boxes, and within an
Speaker 3: hour I found a letter that Eric Menendez had written
Speaker 3: to Andy Cano in December of nineteen eighty eight, and
Speaker 3: in that letter, Eric Menendez talks about it's clear from
Speaker 3: the letter that Eric Menendez was having ongoing communication with
Speaker 3: his cousin Andy about the molestation. And I'll read you
Speaker 3: one quick paragraph a couple sentences her letter, in which
Speaker 3: Eric wrote to his cousin, I've been trying to avoid Dad.
Speaker 3: It's still happening Andy, but it's worse for me. Now
Speaker 3: I can't explain it. He's so overweight that I can't
Speaker 3: stand to see him. I never know when it's going
Speaker 3: to happen, and it's driving me crazy. Every night I say,
Speaker 3: I'm thinking he might come in. I need to put
Speaker 3: it out of my mind. I know what you said before,
Speaker 3: but I'm afraid you just don't know Dad like I do.
Speaker 3: He's crazy. He's warned me a hundred times about telling anyone.
Speaker 3: So this was quite When I read this letter out
Speaker 3: loud in Marchikano, she became emotional and we were both
Speaker 3: extremely surprised because I knew all the evidence from both
Speaker 3: trials and over the course of the investigation, and I
Speaker 3: contacted the lawyers and the brothers, and you know, found
Speaker 3: out that this letter had never been introduced at either
Speaker 3: of the trials or was never brought up in any
Speaker 3: evidence hearing. And there is no the letter was just
Speaker 3: a loose couple of pages, you know, in about with
Speaker 3: many other papers, there's no post there's no envelope with
Speaker 3: a postmark. But the letter is self authenticated by references
Speaker 3: that Eric is making in it. One of them is
Speaker 3: he's talking about a Christmas family that the Christmas party
Speaker 3: that the family had just held at the mansion with
Speaker 3: all the employees at Live Entertainment, and I knew about
Speaker 3: that party. I knew when it took place. And he
Speaker 3: also talked about in the letter that the family had
Speaker 3: just hired Mark Teffernan as their new tennis coach, and
Speaker 3: that took place in November of nineteen eighty eight. And
Speaker 3: the brothers at Peel Attorney is having forensic testing done
Speaker 3: and it can be determined by it's a handwritten letter.
Speaker 3: It can be determined approximately the date that letter was written,
Speaker 3: and the appeal attorney is confident that it really was
Speaker 3: written in December of nineteen eighty eight. The murders were
Speaker 3: August of eighty nine. So in order the brothers have
Speaker 3: exhausted all the original appeals, in order to open a
Speaker 3: new appeal in California, you have to have new evidence,
Speaker 3: and so that letter is one piece of potential new
Speaker 3: evidence that could lead to the filing of a new appeal.
Speaker 3: I hope there will be the filing of a new appeal.
Speaker 3: And there is some other evidence that I have discovered
Speaker 3: since my book was published. And so basically I just
Speaker 3: want to say stay tuned because this story isn't over yet.
Speaker 7: Wow, that's incredible. Well, we haven't told about our audience,
Speaker 7: and it's chronicle in your book in incredible detail and
Speaker 7: is very very vivid. Is the betrayal that the image
Speaker 7: that the family presented was much much different. And you
Speaker 7: say this generational sexual abuse, but this father was an
Speaker 7: extraordinarily when we talk about controlling figure, this was an
Speaker 7: extraordinary controlling behavior in term of telling the mother and
Speaker 7: the father tell them they shouldn't have any friends because
Speaker 7: that would they would lose their competitive competitiveness. The humiliation
Speaker 7: and degradation regardless of the success that they had in Tennis,
Speaker 7: the monitoring, and right at the end where Eric was
Speaker 7: supposed to go to usel Ucla to go to school,
Speaker 7: he was also told by his father, now you're going
Speaker 7: to stay home three or four days so we can
Speaker 7: monitor your work. And these are grown adults that they
Speaker 7: were doing this, And what lent credibility to what you
Speaker 7: were saying is that their defense was their claim was
Speaker 7: by Abramsom was that they were afraid that night, they
Speaker 7: were afraid that they were going to be killed. There
Speaker 7: was a conversation that was said by their father that
Speaker 7: indicated to them they said that no matter that their
Speaker 7: choices had been made, and they believe their father was
Speaker 7: a very dangerous person that would put into motion this threat.
Speaker 7: Wasn't that true.
Speaker 3: Yes, a lot of people had a you know, we're confused,
Speaker 3: you know, you know about as the details were coming
Speaker 3: out about the background of the family. Because Josean Kitty
Speaker 3: Menendez were very controlling of the brother's lives. One of
Speaker 3: the things they used to do was they used to
Speaker 3: do their homework. It didn't take teachers long to figure
Speaker 3: out that the homework was always perfect, and then the
Speaker 3: brothers would failed when they took a test in the classroom.
Speaker 3: The parents used to tell the brothers, you know, who
Speaker 3: they could date, who they could be friends with. So
Speaker 3: they controlled every aspect of their son's lives. So this
Speaker 3: was a family in which the Hosean Kitty were very
Speaker 3: careful to maintain the facade of the perfect family. You know,
Speaker 3: on the outside, this family looked perfect. They lived in
Speaker 3: a mansion in Beverly Hill's father was an entertainment executive,
Speaker 3: making millions dollars a year, the mother former beauty queen,
Speaker 3: you know, happy housewife, and the sons weren't nationally ranked
Speaker 3: tennis players. So on the outside, this family looked perfect,
Speaker 3: but it was all of a sudden the reality was
Speaker 3: that the Menenda's family was spinning out of control. A
Speaker 3: pair of dysfunctional parents had raised a couple of dysfunctional kids,
Speaker 3: and everything ended in this terrible tragedy.
Speaker 7: Absolutely, I want to thank you very much for coming
Speaker 7: on and talking about the Menendez murders, the shocking, untold
Speaker 7: story of the Menendez family and the killings. This fund
Speaker 7: the nation for people that might want to take a
Speaker 7: look at this. Do you have a Facebook page or
Speaker 7: a website that they might take a look at more
Speaker 7: information about this book?
Speaker 3: Sure? Well, first of all, thanks for having me on, Dan,
Speaker 3: and I do have a website. I do have a website,
Speaker 3: Menendez Murders dot com, which has background about the case
Speaker 3: and background about my book. And I also want to
Speaker 3: mention that in the fall of twenty seventeen, NBC produced
Speaker 3: an eight hour limited series called Law and Order True Crime,
Speaker 3: The Menendez Murders, and I was hired by Dick Wolf,
Speaker 3: the legendary Law and Order producer, and work with that
Speaker 3: series as a consultant. And the series stars e Falco
Speaker 3: and it is streaming on all major platforms and if
Speaker 3: you're interested in the case, it's a very good binge
Speaker 3: series to Binge, so please check that out as well
Speaker 3: as my website Menendez Murders dot com.
Speaker 7: Yes, absolutely, thank you very much, Robert. We could go
Speaker 7: on and talk about this for hours and hours because
Speaker 7: it's such an incredible and fascinating case that touched everybody
Speaker 7: throughout the world. Fantastic to be able to get you
Speaker 7: to be able to discuss this just for a short while.
Speaker 7: I want to thank you very much, Robert Rand for
Speaker 7: coming on and talking about the Menendez murders. It's been
Speaker 7: an absolute pleasure. Thank you very much.
Speaker 3: Yes, thanks so much for having me on.
Speaker 7: You have a great evening.
Speaker 3: Good night you too.