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American brothers convicted of murdering their parents From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Joseph Lyle Menéndez (born January 10, 1968)[2] and Erik Galen Menéndez (born November 27, 1970)[3] are American brothers who were convicted in 1996 of the murders of their parents, José and Mary Louise "Kitty" Menéndez.
Lyle and Erik Menéndez | |
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![]() Mug shots of Lyle (left) and Erik (right) Menéndez taken in 2023. | |
Born | Joseph Lyle Menéndez January 10, 1968 New York City, U.S. Erik Galen Menéndez November 27, 1970 Blackwood, New Jersey, U.S. |
Criminal status | Incarcerated at Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility (both)[1] |
Spouse(s) | (Erik) Tammi Menéndez (m. 1999) (Lyle) Rebecca Sneed (m. 2003) |
Parent(s) | José and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menéndez |
Conviction(s) | First-degree murder, conspiracy to murder |
Criminal penalty | Life in prison without the possibility of parole (both) |
Details | |
Victims | José and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menéndez |
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) |
During their 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. However, both juries deadlocked, resulting in a mistrial. For the second trial, they were tried together by a single jury that found them guilty. Both brothers were sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
José Enrique Menéndez was born on May 6, 1944, in Havana, Cuba. At age 16, shortly after the end of the Cuban Revolution, he moved to the United States.[4] José attended Southern Illinois University, where he met Mary Louise "Kitty" Andersen (1941–1989). They were married in 1963 and moved to New York City where José earned an accounting degree from Queens College.[5]
The couple's first son, Joseph Lyle, who goes by his middle name, was born on January 10, 1968, in New York.[6][7] 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.[8][9] The family lived in Hopewell Township and both brothers attended Princeton Day School.[5]
In the summer of 1976, Lyle and Erik's cousin, Diane Vander Molen, came to stay with them. She stated Lyle confessed to her that he was being sexually abused by his father. Vander Molen told Kitty what Lyle had said, but Kitty sided with her husband and said Lyle was lying. Vander Molen recalls that afterward, Kitty put Lyle upstairs and that was the last Vander Molen heard of the claim.[10]
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.[8][5] 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.[11] About two weeks before the murders, Erik and his friend Michael Joyce[12] entered the 1989 Boys' Junior National Tennis Championship. Erik reached the second round of qualifying in the Boys' 18 singles, while Joyce reached the quarterfinals.[13]
Lyle attended Princeton University, but was placed on academic probation for poor grades and was eventually suspended for plagiarism.[14]
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.[15] José was shot six times, including a fatal shot in the back of the head with a Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun.[16] Kitty was shot ten times in total. Before the fatal shot to her cheek, she was on the ground, slowly crawling and crying. Lyle ran to his car to reload before firing the fatal shot to her face.[17][18]
Immediately after the killings, both brothers remained in the house expecting the police to respond due to the noise of the gunshots.[19] When the police arrived, the brothers told them that the killings had occurred while they were at a movie theater watching 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.[20]
In the months after the killings, the brothers began to spend extravagantly on luxury items, businesses, and travel.[20] Lyle bought Chuck's Spring Street Cafe, a Buffalo wing restaurant in Princeton, New Jersey, as well as a Rolex watch and a Porsche Carrera.[21] 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.[22] They also dined expensively and took overseas trips to the Caribbean and London.[23] Collectively, they 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.[20] 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.[24]
During the early stages of the investigation, police tried to narrow their search to suspects who had motives to kill José and Kitty and also investigated potential mob leads. As the investigation continued, they began to suspect the brothers were the most likely perpetrators due to the obvious financial motive and their exorbitant spending after the killings. In an attempt to get a confession from Erik, police arranged for his friend, Craig Cignarelli, to wear a wire during a lunch with Erik at a local beachfront restaurant. When Cignarelli asked Erik whether he had killed his parents, Erik denied it.[25] 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 she told the police about the brothers' involvement.[26] 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 jailed separately.[27]
In August 1990, Judge James Albrecht ruled that tapes of the conversations between Erik and Oziel were admissible evidence since Oziel stated that Lyle threatened him and violated doctor–patient privilege. Albrecht's ruling was appealed, after which the proceedings were delayed for two years. The Supreme Court of California ruled in August 1992 that most of the tapes were admissible, with the exception of the tape on which Erik discussed the murders.[28] After that decision, a Los Angeles County grand jury issued indictments in December 1992, charging the brothers with the murders of their parents.[29]
The Menéndez case became a national sensation when Court TV broadcast the trial in 1993.[30] Represented by their defense lawyer, Leslie Abramson, the brothers stated that they killed their parents out of fear for their lives after a lifetime of abuse at the hands of their parents, especially sexual abuse at the hands of their father, who was described as a cruel perfectionist and pedophile. Meanwhile, their mother was described as an enabling, selfish, mentally unstable alcoholic and drug addict who encouraged her husband's behavior and was also violent toward the brothers.[31]
The allegations against the couple were supported by the testimony of two family members. The brothers' cousin, Andy Cano, said that as a child Erik told him about the sexual abuse, which they both described as "penis massages".[32] Diane Vander Molen, another cousin of the brothers, stated that she once told Kitty about José's molestation of Lyle, although Kitty told her that it was false.[33] As physical evidence the defense presented a photograph of Lyle and Erik's genitalia allegedly taken by their father when they were children.
The prosecution argued that the killings were done for financial gain. This theory was disputed by the defense team, which claimed that the brothers did not think they were getting an inheritance. Lyle's prosecutor, Pam Bozanich, argued that "men could not be raped, because they lack the necessary equipment to be raped."[34][35]
Erik testified that a couple of weeks before the night of the killings, he told his brother about the sexual abuse he was experiencing, which led to several confrontations within the family. The brothers also testified that their father threatened to kill them if they did not keep the abuse secret. They claimed the last confrontation happened inside their home's den on August 20, 1989, a few minutes before Kitty and José were killed. The brothers stated that their father closed the den's door, which was unusual. Paranoid and afraid that they would be killed by their own parents, Lyle and Erik went outside to load their shotguns. Erik stated, "as I went into the room, I just started firing."[36]
The trial ended with two deadlocked juries. As a result, Los Angeles County District Attorney Gil Garcetti immediately announced that the brothers would be retried. The second trial was somewhat less publicized, in part because Judge Stanley Weisberg did not allow cameras in the courtroom.[37] During the second trial, Weisberg, relying upon a legal decision by the Supreme Court in an unrelated case, limited testimony about the sexual abuse claims[38] and did not allow the jury to vote on manslaughter charges instead of murder charges.[39]
Both brothers were eventually convicted on two counts of first-degree murder and conspiracy to murder; in the penalty phase of the trial, they were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The jury noted the abuse defense was not a factor in its deliberations but it decided not to impose the death penalty because both brothers had no prior criminal record or history of violence. However, unlike the juries in the previous trials, the jury in the penalty phase rejected the defense's theory that the brothers killed their parents out of fear and believed that they committed the killings in order to inherit their father's wealth.[40]
During the penalty phase, Abramson apparently told defense witness William Vicary to edit his own notes, but the district attorney's office decided not to launch a criminal investigation of Abramson.[41] Both brothers also filed motions for a mistrial, claiming that they suffered irreversible damage in the penalty phase as a result of possible misconduct and ineffective representation by Abramson. On July 2, 1996, Weisberg sentenced the brothers to life in prison without the possibility of parole to be served as consecutive sentences for the killings and the charges of conspiracy to commit murder.
As in their pretrial detention, the California Department of Corrections separated the brothers and sent them to different prisons. Since they were considered to be maximum-security inmates, they were segregated from other prisoners. They remained in separate prisons until February 2018, when Lyle was moved from Mule Creek State Prison to the Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility[42] where they were housed in separate units. Erik also spent some time at Pleasant Valley Prison in Coalinga, California.
On April 4, 2018, Lyle was moved into the same housing unit as Erik, reuniting them for the first time since they began serving their sentences nearly 22 years earlier. The brothers burst into tears and hugged each other at their first meeting in the housing unit. The unit where they are housed is reserved for inmates who agree to participate in education and rehabilitation programs without creating disruptions.[43][44][45]
On February 27, 1998, the California Court of Appeal upheld the brothers' murder convictions, and on May 28, 1998, the Supreme Court of California declined to review the case, thus allowing the decision of the appellate court to stand.[6] Both brothers filed habeas corpus petitions with the Supreme Court of California, which were denied in 1999. Having exhausted their appeal remedies in state court, they filed separate habeas corpus petitions in the United States District Court. On March 4, 2003, a magistrate judge recommended the denial of the petitions,[46] and the district court adopted the recommendation. The brothers then decided to appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. On September 7, 2005, a three-judge panel denied both their habeas corpus petitions,[47] although Judge Alex Kozinski noted that the trial judge changed many of his rulings during the two trials.[48]
In May 2023, the brothers filed documents seeking a new hearing based on newly discovered evidence purporting to show that their father had also molested boy-band member Roy Rosselló.[49] Specifically, on April 18, 2023, on a segment of the Today Show about an upcoming docuseries, Rosselló stated that he had been drugged and raped by José Menéndez when he was visiting the Menéndez's New Jersey home at the age of 14.[50]
On July 2, 1996, Lyle married Anna Eriksson at a ceremony attended by Abramson and his aunt Marta Menéndez, officiated by Judge Nancy Brown; they divorced on April 1, 2001,[6] after Eriksson discovered that Lyle was allegedly cheating on her with another woman. In November 2003, Lyle married Rebecca Sneed at a ceremony in a visiting area of Mule Creek State Prison; they had known each other for around ten years before their engagement.[51][52]
On June 12, 1999, Erik married Tammi Ruth Saccoman at Folsom State Prison in a prison waiting room. Tammi later stated: "Our wedding cake was a Twinkie. We improvised. It was a wonderful ceremony until I had to leave. That was a very lonely night."[53][54] In an October 2005 interview with ABC News, she described her relationship with Erik as "something that I've dreamed about for a long time. And it's just something very special that I never thought that I would ever have."[55]
In 2005, Saccoman self-published a book, They Said We'd Never Make It – My Life with Erik Menéndez, but she said on CNN's Larry King Live that Erik also "did a lot of editing on the book".[56] In an interview with People magazine, she stated:
Not having sex in my life is difficult, but it's not a problem for me. I have to be emotionally attached, and I'm emotionally attached to Erik ... My family does not understand. When it started to get serious, some of them just threw up their hands.[53]
Saccoman also stated that she and her daughter drive 150 mi (240 km) every weekend to visit Erik, and that her daughter refers to him as her "Earth Dad".[53] Discussing his life sentence, Erik stated: "Tammi is what gets me through. I can't think about the sentence. When I do, I do it with a great sadness and a primal fear. I break into a cold sweat. It's so frightening I just haven't come to terms with it."[53]
In 2010, A&E released Mrs. Menéndez, a documentary about Saccoman.[57] In late 2017, A&E aired a five-part documentary titled The Menendez Murders: Erik Tells All, in which Erik describes via telephone the murders and the aftermath. The series also shows never-before-seen photos and new interviews with prosecutors, law enforcement, close family and friends, and medical experts.[58]