By the summer of 1993, when the trial of Lyle and Erik Menendez began, Southern California had seen Rodney King, riots, wildfires, and mudslides. The trial was a different iteration of front-page Los Angeles news, the first in a succession of “Crimes of the Century.” It was O.J. before O.J.
I was the Los Angeles Times staff writer who covered the first of the brothers’ two trials, the one that was televised, the one that ended with deadlocked juries, the one you can see now on YouTube or TikTok. For six months, I sat in a courtroom in Van Nuys, California, and took notes.
The new Netflix documentary, The Menendez Brothers, stresses the sexual abuse the boys allegedly suffered at the hands of their father, and thus creates a sympathetic aura around them. Kim Kardashian has said the brothers’ life sentences should be “reconsidered.” And Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón said his office is reviewing “new evidence.”
Defense lawyers have put forward a recently discovered letter written by Erik Menendez—eight months before the shootings—that, they assert, suggests sexual abuse by the father was ongoing into the younger brother’s teenage years. Further, the lawyers say, José Menendez sexually assaulted a former underage member of the 1980s pop band Menudo.
The defense argues in its new petition: “To resolve this case, jurors had to decide a single, critical question: Was José Menendez molesting his sons?” No. That is not it at all. What jurors had to decide is whether—when they gunned both parents—the brothers were genuinely afraid their parents were about to kill or seriously hurt them.
Which is why all these years later, my take is simple. The brothers are skilled liars who prey on the emotions of those who do not understand the presence of evil in our world. The so-called “abuse excuse”?
So what?
Lyle and Erik Menendez are stone-cold murderers. On August 20, 1989, using shotguns, they killed their parents, José and Kitty, at close range in the den of the family’s Beverly Hills home.
Was José Menendez a good father? A bad father? A horrible father? Even if he was truly horrible, it doesn’t excuse or justify what the brothers did to their parents. Nothing does.
That first trial began in July 1993. I sat in that courtroom with an open mind and a distinct lens. I am a 1980 Northwestern journalism school graduate, but I’m also a licensed, now inactive, California lawyer.
The brothers’ abuse excuse, as I wrote in that L.A. Times preview piece, marked an effort to “test an emerging legal strategy that portrays abused children as victims, akin to battered women, and justified in killing in self-defense.”
Before the trial, I interviewed a judge. “In this day and age it has become de rigueur in parricide cases to claim this abuse,” he told me. “The father is gone, the mother is gone. The sympathy now lies with the children, who complain of having their pudding withdrawn. And people in the fourth estate tend to make such claims plausible. Let’s face it, it sells a lot of soap.”
If anyone could have gotten them off, it would have been the brothers’ lead counsel, Leslie Abramson. (Our last names are similar but we are not related.) She is perhaps the finest defense lawyer I have ever seen. I covered the Betty Broderick murder trial in San Diego; I helped (a bit, not a lot) with O.J. Simpson coverage; I covered the L.A. criminal courts for some years. Abramson’s job was to distract and deflect. She was good at it.
But she could never get past one problem. No matter what happened inside the house at 722 North Elm Drive before August 20, 1989, there was never any evidence to corroborate the brothers’ abuse allegations—or, more importantly, the idea they were afraid they were about to be killed that night.
Besides, abuse does not justify or excuse a revenge killing. It may be a reason to reduce punishment. But killing someone isn’t self-defense unless you believe they’re about to kill you. That’s not the case with Lyle and Erik Menendez.
Indeed, about four months after the killings, on December 11, 1989, the brothers met with their Beverly Hills psychologist, L. Jerome Oziel. They talked—in confidence—about why they killed their parents. If ever there would have been a time to confide their deepest, darkest secret, this would have been it. But no. Not once did either claim to have been sexually abused. Is it any wonder that the defense fought for four years to keep this tape secret? Because instead of saying they were afraid for their lives, Lyle said his father had been unfaithful, causing Kitty to turn to liquor and pills. So: “We thought that we would just kill Dad, and eliminate the problem.”
The mother? Killing her was “putting her out of her misery, really.”
In the wake of the killings, the brothers did have some regrets. On the 61-minute Oziel tape, Lyle said, “You just miss having these people around.”
Then, he said, “I miss not having my dog around. If I can make such a gross analogy.” In the courtroom, people gasped.
In almost every homicide case, there are so-called “bad facts,” evidence that is difficult to explain away. The bad facts in the Menendez trial were really bad.
Exhibit A: The brothers bought the shotguns days before the shootings. To buy the weapons, they went to San Diego and used fake IDs. That the killings were premeditated could not be doubted.
Exhibit B: After breaking into the den and firing 13 to 15 shotgun blasts, with Lyle shooting his father in the back of the head, the mother, incredibly, was still alive. Lyle went outside, reloaded, and came back in.
“I just reached over and I shot her close,” Lyle testified. An autopsy report indicated Kitty was blasted in the left cheek, the gun barrel on her skin.
Almost no journalist writing about the case today has cited the decision by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, issued in 2005, after the brothers were found guilty in their second trial. It destroys arguments advanced on behalf of the brothers. Lyle is dismissed in a footnote: “In fact, evidence that Lyle ever feared his parents is so weak in the record that his claim could be rejected without discussion.”
Erik, the one who claimed to have been abused right up until the time he killed his parents, is the one who gets far more attention.
In putting forward abuse allegations, the defense was trying to establish what’s called “imperfect self-defense”—meaning that the killer has to believe that they were in imminent danger. Had the defense succeeded, the crime would have been cut down to manslaughter.
When the brothers burst into the den, their parents were watching TV. What imminent harm did they present to their sons? None. This is why the Ninth Circuit rejected the abuse evidence—which, once again, to be clear, was uncorroborated.
“Erik’s testimony about his general fear in the days leading up to the murder does not provide any evidence that, at the moment he shotgunned his parents to death, he feared he was in imminent peril,” the court writes.
It adds a few lines later, “Taking Erik’s testimony as true, these killings were, in effect, preemptive strikes.” The “focus on this evidence,” wrote the court, “is misplaced.”
Sons who murder parents? In preemptive strikes? They belong in a state prison. For life. Not in the civilized world, among us.
Alan Abrahamson is an associate professor at the USC Annenberg journalism school. He was an L.A. Times staff writer for 17 years. You can find him at www.3WireSports.com.
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