Kitty #Menendez was #BornOnThisDay. On August 20, 1989, Kitty & her husband were #shot to #death in their living room while watching TV. The #killers were their sons Lyle & Erik. The #Menendezbrothers were sentenced to life in #prison with no possibility of parole. #Kitty #RIP

Lyle and Erik Menéndez


Mug shots of Lyle (left) and Erik (right) Menéndez

Born: Joseph Lyle Menéndez; January 10, 1968 (age 56); New York City, U.S.
Erik Galen Menéndez; November 27, 1970 (age 53); Blackwood, New Jersey, U.S.
Criminal status: Incarcerated at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility (both)
Parent(s): José and Mary Menéndez
Conviction(s): First-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder
Criminal penalty: Life in prison without the possibility of parole (both)

Details
Date: August 20, 1989
Location(s): Beverly Hills, California, U.S.
Target(s): José and Mary Menéndez
Killed: 2
Weapons: Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun
Date apprehended: March 8, 1990 (Lyle); March 11, 1990 (Erik)

Joseph Lyle Menéndez (born January 10, 1968) and Erik Galen Menéndez (born November 27, 1970) are American brothers who were convicted in 1996 of the murders of their parents, José and Mary Louise "Kitty" Menéndez.

During the trial, the brothers stated that they committed the murders out of fear that their father would kill them after they threatened to expose him for years of sexual, emotional, and physical abuse, while the prosecution argued that they did it to inherit their father's multimillion-dollar estate. They were first tried separately, with one jury for each brother. Both juries deadlocked, which resulted in a mistrial. For the second trial, they were tried together by a single jury, which found them guilty; as a result, they were sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

Background

José Enrique Menéndez was born on May 6, 1944, in Havana, Cuba. At age 16, shortly after the start of the Cuban Revolution, he moved to the United States. José attended Southern Illinois University, where he met Mary Louise "Kitty" Andersen (1941–1989). They married in 1963 and moved to New York City, where José earned an accounting degree from Queens College.

The couple's first son, Joseph Lyle, who goes by his middle name, was born on January 10, 1968, in New York. Kitty quit her teaching job after Lyle was born, and the family moved to New Jersey, where Erik Galen was born on November 27, 1970, in Gloucester Township. The family lived in Hopewell Township and both brothers attended Princeton Day School.

In the summer of 1976, Lyle and Erik's cousin Diane Vander Molen came to stay with them. She claims Lyle confessed to her that he was being sexually abused by his father. Vander Molen told his mother Kitty what he had said but she took her husband's side and said he was lying. Vander Molen recalls that afterward Kitty put Lyle upstairs and that was the last Vander Molen heard anything about it.

In 1986, José's career as a corporate executive (he had joined the company then known as International Video Entertainment) took the family to Beverly Hills, California. The following year, Erik attended Beverly Hills High School, where he earned average grades but displayed a remarkable talent for tennis, ranking 44th in the US as a junior. Not two weeks before the murders, Erik and friend Michael Joyce entered the 1989 Boys' Junior National Tennis Championship. Erik reached the second round of qualifying in the Boys' 18 singles; Joyce reached the quarterfinals.

Lyle attended Princeton University, but was on academic probation for poor grades, and was eventually suspended for plagiarism.

Crimes

On the evening of August 20, 1989, José and Kitty were standing in the den of their Beverly Hills mansion when Lyle and Erik entered the den carrying shotguns. José was shot 6 times, including the fatal shot in the back of the head with a Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun. Kitty was shot 10 times in total. Before the fatal shot to her cheek, she was on the ground, slowly crawling and moaning. Lyle then ran to his car to reload, and then fired the fatal shot to her face.

Immediately after the killings, both brothers remained in the house, expecting the police to respond due to the noise of the gunshots. When the police arrived, the brothers told them that the killings had occurred while they were out at a movie theater seeing Batman and attending the "Taste of L.A." festival at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. The police did not seek gunshot residue tests from the brothers, which would have indicated whether they had recently discharged a firearm.

In the months after the killings, the brothers began to spend extravagantly on luxury items, businesses, and travel. Lyle bought a Chuck's Spring Street Cafe, a Buffalo wing restaurant in Princeton, New Jersey, as well as a Rolex watch and a Porsche Carrera. Erik hired a full-time tennis coach and competed in a series of tournaments in Israel. The brothers eventually left the Beverly Hills mansion unoccupied, choosing to live in adjoining condominiums in nearby Marina del Rey. They also dined expensively, and went on overseas trips to the Caribbean and London. They collectively spent approximately $700,000 before their arrests; family members later disputed a connection between their spending and the murder of their parents, claiming that there were no changes in their spending habits after the killings. At one point they attended a New York Knicks basketball game, which became immortalized when they appeared courtside in the background of a Mark Jackson trading card.

During the early stages of the investigation, the police tried to narrow their search to suspects who had motives to kill José and Kitty and also investigated potential mob leads. As their investigation continued, they began to suspect that the brothers were the most likely perpetrators because of the obvious financial motive and their exorbitant spending after the killings. In an attempt to get a confession from Erik, the police arranged for his friend Craig Cignarelli to wear a wire during a lunch with Erik at a local beachfront restaurant, but when Cignarelli asked Erik whether he had killed his parents, Erik denied it. Erik eventually confessed to his psychologist Jerome Oziel, who then told his mistress, Judalon Smyth. Oziel later broke up with Smyth and in a fit of rage to get back at him, she told the police about the brothers' involvement. Lyle was arrested on March 8, 1990, and Erik turned himself in three days later after returning to Los Angeles from Israel. Both were held without bail and kept separate from each other.

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On August 20, 1989, Lyle and Erik Menendez shot their parents to death as they watched television.