THE BROTHERS GRIM
Killer siblings Lyle & Erik Menendez documented in ‘American Sons, American Murderers’
N ABC special/documentary is revisiting the shocking, cold-blooded murder that produced a circus-of-a-trial airing on national TV — two years before OJ Simpson’s “Trial of the Century.”
“Truth and Lies: The Menendez Brothers — American Sons, American Murderers” documents the August 1989 murders of Jose and Kitty Menendez. Jose, a self-made Cuban-born entertainment executive and Kitty, his socialite wife, were executed in a hail of machine-gun bullets while watching TV in their Beverly Hills mansion. Their two sons, Lyle and Erik — then 21 and 18, respectively — were eventually arrested for the murders after Erik confessed to his psychiatrist.
The brothers’ 1994 trial riveted and polarized a nation watching it unfold on Court TV. Were Lyle and Erik spoiled, amoral opportunists who killed their parents for insurance money ($400,000) — or, as they alleged, were they avenging years of sexual abuse by their domineering father and complicit, alcoholic mother?
“We’re a different society today than we were back in 1993,” says ABC News chief foreign correspondent Terry Moran, who covered the Menendez trial for Court TV and is featured in “Truth and Lies.” “If the Menendez brothers were sisters, I think they’d be free today because people would have believed their traumatic, intense and emotional testimony [about being sexually abused]. They each had corroborating witnesses regarding the sexual abuse. We didn’t want to believe it happened to boys.
“Everyone said they were just acting,” he says. “Well, they didn’t do a good acting job when they said they feared for their lives — but it was totally different when they were discussing the sexual abuse. My hunch is that, today, people watching [the documentary] will end up feeling more empathetic for the brothers. They were laughingstocks in 1993 and ’94.” [“Saturday Night Live” spoofed the trial in a 1993 skit featuring John Malkovich as Lyle and Rob Schneider as Erik.] The original trial ended in January 1994 with a hung jury. The brothers were tried again in 1995 — this time without cameras in the courtroom — and, in March 1996, were convicted of first-degree murder. Both were sentenced to two consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole. “I think the judge in the second [Menendez] trial was angry at the spectacle the [first] trial became,” Moran says. “And the fact that they were not convicted … people were angry about that and heaped scorn on the LA jurors and the courts.”
Lyle Menendez, now 48, is serving his sentence in California’s Mule Creek State Prison. He’s interviewed via phone in Thursday night’s documentary. Erik, who’s in another California prison, declined to be interviewed. The brothers keep in touch through letters.
Moran is asked why the Menendez trial doesn’t resonate as much as the Simpson trial. “They were both incredible trials for different reasons,” he says. “OJ was about the country, about us as a society because of race being a major factor.
“The Menendez trial was about an intense, horrific family drama. We didn’t really stay with [Lyle and Erik] once the trial was over. We saw what happened, debated it, and were done. But the issues it raised will never go away.”
“Truth and Lies: The Menendez Brothers — American Sons, American Murderers” 9 p.m. Thursday on ABC