The Menendez Brothers

[Music] Hello everyone and welcome to episode 41 of the True Crime All the Time podcast. My name is Mike Ferguson and with me as always is my partner in True Crime Mike Gibson. Gibi, how are you today? Hey man, I'm doing well. Good, I'm glad to hear it. I'm always glad to hear it when you're doing well. Yeah. It makes me feel good, it makes life easier, just makes the world happy. I'd like to buy the world a coke wouldn't you? I would. The saying in perfect harmony. Or Pepsi for those other folks. You know, for Gibi and I, starting the podcast was a big deal. Well, starting your own business is a big deal and there's a lot you need to know from day one. One company that makes everything easier is Shopify. We use it for all of our podcast merch. Shopify powers millions of businesses worldwide from household names like Mattel and Jim Shark to small businesses just getting started. Shopify has the templates and AI tools you need to get a stunning side up and running fast. No coding needed. Shopify checkout means more customers actually buy and returning ones can do it in a single click. And if you have any questions, Shopify's built in AI assistant sidekick is ready to help you build troubleshoot and keep moving and Shopify has award winning 24/7 customer service on top of it. All you need is the idea. Shopify handles the rest. Start your free trial at Shopify.com/TKat. Start your free trial at Shopify.com/TCATT. All right. So let's jump out and talk about our new Patreon supporters. We have Jason Chandler, Ricky Temple, Kelly King jumped out at our highest Patreon level. Cool. We have Rob Eben, Elwood All's House. Great name. Great name. Jumped out at our highest level. So did Jesse Henderson and so did Elijah Banks. Wow. So I had a lot of people, a lot of new people this week. Thank you. A lot of folks jumping out at our highest level. Just the mere fact that you're choosing to support us. It means the world to us. It does. The dollar amount is what it is. It's just awesome. It is. That people say, hey, I'm willing to give a little because we really appreciate what you're doing. Well, they find value in us and that means a lot. Yeah. And people listening that aren't Patreon supporters that are supporting us on Facebook, Twitter, telling their friends. Yeah. Which helps out all of it helps. Absolutely. So it's just amazing. You really can't separate any of it because it helps us in and it makes us feel good. Yeah. Does a couple of different things. If you can, it's great. If you can't at least spread the word, maybe. And that's something you and I decided from the beginning, right? We were not going to try to pressure anybody. Never would do that. Right. If any, if people want to support it, we love it. It's great. But if they can't or don't want to, that's great too. There are a lot of other ways to help us out. Yeah. So it gives, I did go back to the archives, vault door opening. Yeah. Need to still find that soundtrack. And I want to single out Anthony Inglot. And again, this was probably backgives in the early days where we weren't even doing last names. Probably not. Because for a long time, we didn't. And then we made the switch and we decided we were going to. So Anthony Inglot has been with us from, you know, very close to the beginning. Big props to him. Big thanks. Absolutely. Thank you. We have a bunch of voice mails this week on both solved and unsolved so many that I had to break them up. So if you left a voice mail and you don't hear it on this episode, it's possible that it's on the episode of Unsolved. Or it could be on next week. Right. There have been so many voice mails that have come in since the last time we recorded Gibbs that I just had to split them up. But there is one I want to play up front and then we'll play some at the end. Hi, Mike and Gibbs. It's Maggie. I just wanted to leave a message to say hello to you and everybody else there that likes true crime all the time. I'm very excited to be part of the team now working as a writer researcher. And I can't wait for everybody to hear all the different cases we're going to do and share their thoughts. It's very exciting to be part of such an awesome podcast and I'm very thankful you guys. So I just wanted to say hi really quick. Of course, they say you've been keeping your own time thinking. Bye. So that's Maggie and that's the reason why I wanted to play this one up front. Who's that? Who's that? And mainly to give a big shout out to Maggie because she did do a lot of work on this case that we're getting ready to talk about. Thank you Maggie. Yeah, we love Maggie. So Gibbs, real quick. I want to talk about criminology. My podcast with Mike Morford episode two. Will already have been out by the time this episode airs. If you haven't checked it out, please do so. And then the second one, sex, love and murder with Aphrodite Jones. The first episode is out. So check that out as well. Yeah, must listen. And then real quick, on unsolved this week, we're doing the Tory Pines Beach murders. Two women murdered six years apart. One in the late 70s, one in the 80s. But things really heat up as time goes on and advancements in DNA are made. It's a good one. It will keep you on the edge of your seat. All right, Gibbs. So let's get to our case today. We're talking about a very famous case, the Menin Des Brothers. Oh, yeah. And you and I are old enough to remember this when it happened. There's going to be some listeners that know the case, but weren't really old enough to have experienced the amount of hype. I mean, this case was everywhere. You could not get away from it. It was even kind of joked about on the movie The Cable Guy. They had Vince Diller. He was acting like he was one of the Menin Des kids on the news conferences, playing in the background on the cable guy. He's on the TV. I can news clip in the background every time they go to something. He's always on the background and it's the Menin Des Menin Des. The Menin Des, he plays the Menin Des. He plays the Brothers. The Brothers. Menin Des Brothers. I mean, what is amazing Gibbs, not about this story, about the fact that you actually talked about a movie, knew who was in it, and got all the facts straight. There's a first for everything. It's amazing. I know. Shocker. It's not as funny, but it's amazing. That's all I'm good for tonight. I'm out. I think people like it better when you actually mess it up. Yeah. And then we get to talk about it. It's rare. It's rare to mess things up. I think you just catch it at the right time. I think your success rate is somewhere in the high 90s, for sure. Wouldn't you say? My success rate? As it comes to getting it right? Yeah. When it comes to movies anyway. Oh, I'm way up there. Yes, please. What's the problem? What's the problem? What's the problem? That's how I kill my parents. Pardon me? Don't kill me. Yeah? Who? My name's Bill Mayer. The people. No. No. What are you talking about? Bill. You mean what are you talking about? Yeah. I'm just going to tell you what's wrong. I'm trying to tell you what's wrong with you. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. So I wanted to start out the episode, Gibbs, with playing the 911 call. There is no suspense in this case. There's nothing to build up to. No. We know what happened. Most people know what happened. What we're talking about is brothers, Lyle and Eric Menendez murdering their parents. And you can hear them on the 911 call. And we're going to get into it more. But I kind of wanted to play it up front to set the scene. So Joseph Lyle Menendez, he went by Lyle, was born in New York City on January 10th, 1968. Eric was the younger brother. He was born three years later, November 27th, 1971, in New Jersey. And as we mentioned, both brothers, they're going to become infamous after the murder of their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez. And this occurred in August of 1989. And the murders and the subsequent trial. would draw so much media attention. Like we said, you couldn't get away from it. - No, it was everywhere. - And why was that? You had two privileged white males from a very, very affluent family, murder their parents, something about that caused people to not be able to get enough of the media coverage. - What? - I think people like seeing people on top crumble. - I agree with you. I think they like to see people fall. - Yeah. So a lot of times that's celebrities, but in this case, is it just because they were rich? - I think it played a part of it, sure. I think one, people wanted to see how they actually lived their lives, right? 'Cause that was part of the story, you know, through the trial. They also wanted to see what would make two kids do something so horrific to somebody that they should love. - And to go along with that, the media was happy to oblige by feeling as much air time as they could with every single salacious detail that would come out. And there's gonna be a lot of them. - This is kind of like early reality TV, in a sense. - No, it really is. I wanna start off talking a little bit about Jose and Kitty Menendez. 'Cause like we said, Gibbs, this is not just a straight, kids decided to murder their parents' story. There's a lot to this story, and it's the reason why it's probably gonna take two full episodes to tell the whole thing. So you have Jose Menendez immigrates to America from Havana, Cuba in 1960. And this was just as Fidel Castro was rising to power. Jose was born in 1944. He was the youngest of three children, and he came from what was considered to be an upper middle class family. His dad had actually been a soccer player, and he owned an accounting firm, and his mom was some kind of legendary type athlete in Cuba. She was a swimmer who was eventually elected to the Cuban sports hall of fame. That pretty prestigious. Yeah, I think so. Now, before Castro came to power, the Menendez family was very well regarded in Cuba, but they decide to leave when the dictator gains power. They actually moved to a place called Hazelton, Pennsylvania. And this is where Jose Menendez would attend high school, and he himself was a star athlete, which doesn't surprise me Gibbs. Both his parents were athletes. I'm sure he got a lot of his abilities from them. Yeah, it's in the gene pool, man. He got a four year scholarship to Southern Illinois University, and it was there as a freshman that he would meet a senior named Mary Louise Anderson, who went by the nickname Kitty. Kitty. So Jose's a freshman. Kitty is a senior. They fall in love. And when Kitty graduates, she gets a bachelor's degree of science and communications. They end up moving to New York City, and Jose is able to get a scholarship to Queens College and graduate from there. Jose would find work in the film industry at first in Princeton, New Jersey. And then later on, he's going to move out to California. He works his way up the ladder. He has a stint as a music producer at RCA, but then ultimately he becomes a studio executive at a place called live entertainment. And it would be at live entertainment where Jose would really make his fortune, because he helps this company take their profits in 1988 up to $16 million a year. So he was very well regarded in the industry, but he was also known as a guy that was willing to get ahead by doing anything he had to do. It was said that he could be very aggressive, very intimidating when he had to get what he wanted. So like a bully? Maybe, yeah, maybe a little bit like a bully. Business bully. A business bully. Let's call it that. Intimidating people, brow-beating people, if you want to say that, that's kind of how I look at it, ruling with an iron fist maybe. And because of this, he would end up getting this reputation, but it didn't stop him. It didn't slow him down. Because prior to his death, he's going to become the chief executive at the company. I mean, he's the big dog. And by this point, this guy's worth like $14 million. It's a lot of money back in '88. It's a lot of money. So he had made a lot of money over the years. And this money is going to come into play big time as we start talking about the murders. Now, Kittie Menendez, like we said, born Mary Louise Anderson in a suburb of Chicago, she was the youngest of four children. Her father takes off, leaves the family to marry another woman while she's a child. And this divorce, it was said, had a big impact on Kittie. She ended up developing some type of depression, and it would cause her to avoid social situations. Now, we know Jose and Kittie get married, but neither of their families wanted them to get married. On Jose's side, his family was not crazy about the marriage. And it was said Gibbs, it was because Kittie came from a divorced family. Yeah, they didn't look at those type of situations very kindly back then. No, especially in certain religions or cultures, you're right. Now, on Kittie's side of the family, they didn't like the fact that Jose was Cuban. So this was a marriage that was born out of neither family, wanting them to get married at all. So Kittie staying at home, she's raising Eric and Lyle as Jose is making his way up the corporate ladder. And I think outwardly, she gave off kind of a June cleaver type persona, you know, perfect wife, perfect mother, but inside and to people that knew her very well, she was very high strung, very stressed and didn't deal with stress very well. And I think a big part of this was that she learns at some point in the marriage that Jose is having not just one affair, I mean a string of affairs. And Kittie actually attempts suicide in 1987 by taking a whole bunch of sleeping pills. Now she survives, but she's depressed. Her marriage is tumultuous. And then on top of that, there's a lot in the research about having to deal with Lyle and Eric, who I don't think made it very easy on Kittie. So Lyle and Eric grew up in Princeton, New Jersey. It was said that they were very average in school as far as their grades went. But there was something between the brothers. And I have to stress this gives, because I think it's a very important point. You know, some brothers don't get along. They fight, not mean all brothers fight. - Oh, believe me, I know. - But it's well documented that Lyle and Eric Menendez had some kind of very special brotherly bond. I think a lot more so than most brothers, I believe. Eric seemed to worship Lyle and just thought that he could do no wrong. He thought everything that Lyle did was unbelievable. You know, he followed in his older brother's footsteps. And we have to talk about how Jose treated Eric and Lyle. He was extremely strict, unbelievably controlling when it came to his family. So not only the kids, but Kittie as well. He would manage to have the right words to ridicule and intimidate and humiliate and manipulate anyone that was present so he could control. - He wanted his children to succeed. Most parents do, but he was relentless, you know. He was going to be gone, period. - So that was Jose's sister basically backing that up that Jose wanted things done a certain way. And if he said it was going to be done, it was going to be done that way. And people would say that he was not happy basically with anything. I shouldn't say happy. I should say more like he was never satisfied, right? The kids could never get good enough grades. They couldn't do as well in sports as he wanted them to. And he was big into sports. Remember, his mom and dad were sports stars. He played sports in college. He wanted that for both Eric and Lyle. So he's pushing the kids into sports. sports and what Eric and Lyle settle on is tennis. That's what they decide to take up. And they would actually become pretty good at tennis. But how much of that gives, you have to ask is Jose pushing them, leaning on them all the time to practice and to live up to these unreachable expectations that he set for them. Well, no doubt about it. He was a high achiever growing up, right? High achiever in the business world. He expected the same. So I'm thinking he's a type A personality. There's no doubt about that. The kind of person that would do whatever it takes to get what they want. They're going to push. They're going to push to make it happen. Yeah. And he came from a high achieving family. So again, it's in his genes. 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As kids, you have to look at that and say, "What's going on?" Not normal. In 1982, Lyle would have been around 14 and Eric would have been around 11. I don't know if this comes out, but if it does, it's a warning sign. That would not be the only incident with the female cousin because there is another story about Lyle touching the cousin in ways that he shouldn't have been doing. She ends up pushing him away. Nothing comes of it. The reason why we're telling these stories gives is because of what is going to come up later on in this case as one of the reasons why they murdered their parents. Got to get this stuff in here because it's going to come back around. You're setting the backdrop. You have to. Absolutely. One thing that I found very interesting as it relates to Lyle. At the age of 14, he's playing with stuffed animals. He's wetting the bedgibs. You and I have talked about that. What that means at that age, it is one part of the McDonald's triad. Lyle apparently suffered from some pretty serious insomnia. Hosey is tough on the kids. He would break them at times. He would humiliate them at times. It was said that Kitty really couldn't do anything about it. All she could do is get out of the way, I believe, because Hosey had such a strong personality that he was going to do what he wanted to do. This is the type of guy he is or he was. In 1985, the family moves to California. Lyle wants to stay back in New Jersey because he has this dream of attending Princeton. He gets rejected from Princeton and you know that couldn't have made Hosey happy. Lyle is attending a local community college and he ends up falling in love with the girl and he wants to open this restaurant. What happens is his parents are not happy with these decisions that he's making and they force him to end this relationship with the girl and they don't allow him to open the restaurant. Of course he doesn't have the money to open it on his own. My assumption is he was going to get that from his parents and they said no. He does get accepted to Princeton in 1987. While at Princeton, he gets accused of plagiarism on a paper and this is within the first semester of being at Princeton. He had to go to this hearing in front of a committee and they suspended him for a year. So how do you think Hosey took that? Not well. No, not well. He makes Lyle come home to California but he gives him a job at live entertainment. Hosey wants him to get some type of direction in his life but Lyle is no interest in working at this place. Doesn't like the job at all. Shows up late for work, skips some days altogether and he ends up getting fired from the company where his dad is the big wig. That can't be good man. I mean, that doesn't look good on the dad, doesn't you know? Imagine that conversation around the dinner table with a man like Jose Menendez of the picture that we're painting. Yeah. I mean, this kid just made him look really bad. He looked like an ass. Sure. He's going to take that out on Lyle for sure because you know somebody had to go to him and say, look, your son's a dipshit. He ain't getting it. He ain't cutting it. We got to let him go. And I'm sure his dad probably said, yeah, let him go. No, I agree with you because I think Gibbs, he was a, he was a no nonsense guy. He was a very savvy businessman. He's not going to keep his son around if he's not pulling his way. He's not going to let somebody bring him back down. No. And make him look bad. That's probably the biggest part. Right. He would have wanted Lyle gone just for the mere fact that he didn't want his son making him look bad. I would, I would think so. But as it relates to Lyle Gibbs, we're getting close to 1989. So all these things are happening. They're starting to build, right? We talked about the tension that must have been in that household with him getting fired with him getting kicked out of Princeton. This, this is starting to lead down a bad path. And then you have Eric three years younger. It was said that, you know, he lived in his brother's shadow. But at the same time, he had to deal with the same type of pressures from Jose. And what was said about Eric was that he never seemed to be a happy kid. But he was very close to his mother. And I stress that point because of what we know is going to happen. And I think Eric was very different from Lyle. You know, Eric was sensitive. He was a little bit shy. And he wasn't able to please his father in really any sort of way. So he looked to Eric, his big brother for support and validation. And I think that's important. Now Eric graduated from Beverly Hills High School in 1988. And after a high school, he had plans to attend college out of state, but his dad wouldn't let him. And I think a lot of this was based on the issues that Lyle had in Princeton. Jose didn't want his kids and Eric now to go away from home to be too far out of his control. That's what I believe. So we've kind of taken a parallel path, but we're up to 1988. Eric's graduated from high school. Lyle has been kicked out of Princeton. He's come back, tried to work at live entertainment. That didn't work out. The brothers have the bright idea that they're going to start robbing their friends' parents' houses. So they would break into homes, steal money and jewelry, and Gibbs, they would figure out later on that when all of these robberies were totaled up, it could have been as much as $100,000. It's a lot of money. It is a lot of money. Now you're robbing very wealthy people, so that helps. That's 1988 too, so it's a lot of money. But yeah, that's a good point. It's even more impressive. Impressives not the right word. That dollar figure is even more staggering when you think about it like that in the terms of $19.80 dollars. Sure. Yeah, do the Gibi calculation. I know you've already done it in your head. Yeah, it's like $3.2. $3.2, what? Million? Yeah. You are smoking crack. That's like. You have somehow extrapolated $100,000. 30 years of. To $3.2 million today. Yeah. You're gonna invest your money for you. Give me $100,000. See in 30 years, I promise it'll be more than that. You my friend or no Warren Buffett. Let's just put it that way. If I was, I would. You would be doing this part of your business. Yeah, I wouldn't have a, I wouldn't have my other job either. That's true. So things would come to a head when Eric was pulled over by the police in Calabases for a driving violation and the police would find a whole bunch of stolen items in the trunk of his car. Now in steps Jose, because what does Jose not want? He doesn't want his sons making him look bad. So he hires a big time lawyer to ensure that the boys get off and they don't do any jail time. The deal that the lawyer makes is to have Eric plead guilty because he's still a minor and when he does that, they drop all the charges on Lyle. So he's found innocent and he walks. Eric pleads, but he's not an adult. So nothing's gonna happen to him. So Eric gets community service. Both brothers are required to attend some psychological counseling. What Jose does is he pays back all the victims. So again, gives, I think what this shows a couple of things. It shows how much you could look at a couple ways. Either Jose really cares about his sons and he doesn't want them to get in trouble or he doesn't want them to get in trouble because it's gonna reflect badly on him. The other thing you can look at is what message did this send to Eric and Lyle? Did it essentially show them that if you have enough money, you can get out of anything. So both brothers are heading down a bad path. We know that. They're sick of their parents at this point. They're sick of Jose trying to rule every aspect of their lives and it's during this time that Eric Menendez writes a screenplay and he writes it with one of his friends and the screenplay is about a teenager who murders his rich parents to get their inheritance. And Eric ends up showing the screenplay to Lyle and this is where Lyle would say, "Man, we should do this for real." And they hatch a plan to kill their parents. And so it begins. And so it begins. There's even a story out there, Gibbs, about a second screenplay which was even more detailed about how the murders would happen and was reported to be very close to what actually does happen. But I don't know if that's true or not because I don't think it's ever been validated. And you would think if somebody found it or had it or it would have come forward. I just thought it was an interesting story. Now we're about a month out from the murders and Kitty is going to see her therapist and she would tell her therapist that she thinks both Eric and Lyle are narcissists. She thought they were sociopaths and at this point she was scared of both of them. To the point of she started locking her bedroom door at night. She wouldn't let either of the boys have a key to the house. So if they came home, she had to let them in. This is strange stuff. Yes, no way you want to live, man. No, not in fear of your own kids. Of your own kids. And at some point before the murders, it's thought that Jose and Kitty had threatened Eric and Lyle that if they don't get their shit together, they're going to cut them out of the will completely. Now one day before the murders, August 19, 1989, the family takes a shark fishing trip, just the four of them. And the crew would later say that the family was very unhappy. They didn't talk to each other. Jose was in the back of the boat. The brothers were in the front and Kitty was below deck. So it doesn't sound like much of a family trip. It's basically four people doing their own thing. But we moved to August 20, 1989. This is the day of the murders. Jose and Kitty, they're watching a movie that night, one of the James Bond movies. It was said that the maid had the night off. So it was just them at home, by themselves, Eric and Lyle were out on the town. At around 10 p.m., a teenage girl who lived down the street, she sees a car pull up in front of the house. She sees two men inside, but she couldn't tell who they were. But she sees the men get out of the car, one walk towards the house, and the other got something out of the trunk of the car. It gives, we've got to talk about this how. I keep calling it a house. This is an absolute mansion. Yeah, it's a California mansion for sure. It's like 23 rooms. I think back then they estimated the value was about $4 million. So why don't you do that calculation, ran man? Yeah. 10 million in real estate today. That's much closer than your other calculation. I'll give you that. I can't be perfect all the time with my numbers, man. But suffice to say, this is a mansion. Yeah, not a mick mansion, but a mansion. A real mansion. Yeah. I mean, Jose had the money to back it up. He wasn't faking. He was making a ton of cash. And it was set back from the street. They also had a very high-end security system. There was a very high fence surrounding the house. They had to give us gated. So nobody could drive up the driveway and get to the house. Unless somebody let the gate open. I think that's an important point to make. But on the night of the 20th, the gate was open, the security system was not on. The brothers entered the house through the study. There were some outside doors on this study room. They walked down the hallway to the room where their parents are watching the movie. Jose's asleep on the couch and Kitty is laying on the couch as well with her head and his lap. So they're just relaxing. They're watching this movie kind of getting dozing in and out. As they walk into the room, one of the brothers has a 12-gauge shotgun and multiple shots are fired at Jose. He's hit in the elbow and the arm. He's hit a couple two or three different times. And at one point, one of the brothers walks up right behind Jose, behind the couch, places the shotgun to the back of his head and pulls the trigger. Sometimes you know what a shotgun does, especially at close range. This shot completely blew out the back of Jose's head. I mean, it's hard to imagine what a shotgun blast like that would do to somebody's head at point blank range. Huge blast, man. And then you have to talk about Kitty. Obviously, these shots alert her, whether she's dozing off or whatever. But she's up now because there's shotgun blasts going off inside of a house very loud. And she quickly realizes that she is covered in Jose's blood and body tissue. These horrifying scenes to think about. She gets up and she tries to run. And she shot in the right leg and the right arm. And she falls down between the couch and the coffee table. She tries to get up again and ends up slipping in her own blood. - Yikes. - I mean, I'm just, I'm painting this picture in my mind. - Sure. - It is brutal. As she's trying to get up though, she's shot again. And she's down on the floor and they just start pumping shotgun rounds into her body, their mother. - Yes, like they're from another world, man. You know what I mean? It's just like, - Like you can't believe that a child or a set of brothers would do that to their parents. - How much do they have to hate them to do something like that? - Well, we're gonna talk a lot about it. - Yeah. - I mean, it's gonna be the central theme, the hate and then a whole bunch of other things that they're gonna say. - As you'll say, it's like, like we're living in a movie, but you know what? They're trying to act out a movie, aren't they? They're script. - I mean, the closest thing that I can come up with is some type of Quentin Tarantino movie. You know, like a pulp fiction or a reservoir of dogs. I mean, this is that kind of scene and Gibbs, this is such a strange fact that I have to talk about it. Later on when the corner is looking at all the injuries, it's gonna come out that when Kitty is on the floor and she's being shot with the shotgun, some of it is at such a close range that at one point she shot in the leg and it breaks her leg. That's how close the barrel was to her and that's how much force came out. It snapped her leg into. - There's brutal and then there's brutal. But at this point, she's still alive. You know, she's been shot in the chest. She has a punctured lung. Blood is filling up her chest cavity. - She's tough. - But she's still trying to crawl away and survive. And at this point, the brothers run out of ammo 'cause again, they've just been firing a lot of shots in quick succession. But what are they gonna do? They know they cannot leave their mother alive at this point. She can identify them. She could see them. She knows who it is. That's the other thing Gibbs that I think about. Not that being shot isn't bad enough, but you look up and you see that it's your own flesh and blood, your own kids that you birthed, that you raised. Imagine what that must have been like in that terrifying moment. Yeah, I mean, these are people you should trust. So what the brothers do is they go back out to their car and get more ammo, load up the shotguns again. Kitty is gonna end up being shot a total of 10 times, four times in the head. And again, these are close range. I mean, they're not shooting from across the room. They are walking right up to their mother, putting the gun down on her and squeezing the trigger. And some of these headshots would end up fracturing her skull. So at this point, both Kitty and Jose are dead, but Eric and Lyle are not done because they have an idea that they want to make this look like it was a mob hit. So they go to each one and they shoot them both in the left knee. So there's no doubt that there's some planning that went into these murders, right? They just didn't come home that night and all of a sudden say, hey, let's kill mom and dad. They had to have had the shotguns. They had to have had a significant amount of ammo with them in the trunk of their car. And the other thing they do is they take the time to pick up all the shell casings or the shotgun shells, what's left of them, and then they leave. So the 911 called that we played in the beginning, Lyle made that around 11.47 pm. And it was a little hard to hear, but obviously he says, my parents have been killed. In total, it was about two and a half minutes, but very quickly the police are on the scene, right? This is a very affluent neighborhood. My assumption gives is they probably don't have a lot of murders. So when 911 is called, somebody's out there very quickly. As police officers get to the scene, they hear screaming and they see two men run out of the front door, they run past the police through the gate down the driveway and they fall to their knees in the grass. Now, of course, this is Eric and Lyle, right? They've walked into the house, they've witnessed what has happened. They've called 911 and then they've run out screaming. They're freaking out. And it was said that they were screaming, oh my God, I can't believe it, over and over again. The cops are trying to question them, but this is where things get very strange. 'Cause at one point, Eric is running around and trying to ram his head into a tree. And I don't know, Gibbs, is he thinking, I'm gonna show the police. I'm so distraught that I'm gonna run my head into a tree. And you have Lyle who's trying to restrain Eric and calm him down, but this had to have been a very strange scene to police. So obviously Gibbs, the police get in, they find Kitty and Jose dead. And the lead detective on this case is a man by the name of Les Zeller. And at the time, he was considered to be the top investigator in the Beverly Hills Police Department. And as he's gone through the crime scene, there's a few things that detective Zeller notices. Number one, he realizes that nothing had been stolen. Now we're talking about a very messy murder scene. But he sees that there was no signs of forced entry. And I think pretty quickly, he starts to surmise that whoever killed Jose and Kitty knew them or were familiar with them. Lyle and Eric are questioned by the police, but they're not suspects in the beginning. - I've never seen anything like it. I never will see anything like it. Probably the hardest thing I've probably ever had to. They weren't real. They didn't. They waxed, they looked like they waxed. It's something that I've never seen my dead helpless. I think that possibly if Lyle and I would have been home, if we would have, you know, to do something about it maybe. Maybe my dad would be alive. I definitely would give my life for my dead. - It's one of those cases that's gonna just take some real solid detective work. We do not have a composite drawing of a suspect or a vehicle description because we don't have a suspect at this time. - So what you heard there in the beginning was Lyle. And I don't know about you Gibbs and we're always careful about trying to read too much into how people sound either, you know, after a traumatic experience or whatever, but man, he didn't have much emotion in that interview at all. I don't know what you think. - No, he didn't. I don't think so. - It was a little hard to hear. He talked about his parents looking like wax figures. - That's a strange way to describe your just recent murdered parents. - I guess what I just took away from that was just a severe lack of emotion when describing something that had happened recently, had happened to your parents being murdered just a little questionable, let's call it that. But Lyle and Eric, they're not suspects at this time, but they are being questioned by the police. But the police right now, they just want to know if Lyle and Eric had any information about the crimes, you know, who may have committed it, who had an axe to grind, maybe against Jose, and this is where you have to start talking about the difference between Eric Menendez and Lyle Menendez. When Eric is questioned, he starts to cry. He loses it. But when Lyle is questioned, very much like on the call you just heard, it was said that he was very calm, very collected. There is a distinct difference between these two people. - Police are looking for motives tonight and the murders of a prominent show business executive and his wife. They were found just before midnight last night, shot to death and their exclusive Beverly Hills home. - Private security guards have surrounded the Menendez's Mansion. They say they are here to protect the couple's two sons, Eric and Lyle, because, quote, "the killers may come back for the boys." - So you can hear in that news clip that there's actually security watching over Eric and Lyle because of the fear of whoever killed, Kitty and Jose are gonna come back to finish off the brothers. - Yeah, so I mean, was this extra security brought on by their doing, meaning that they hired this security to put that facade out there, or is this police? Thank you. that they need the security. - Well, I don't know the answer, but if they hired them, then they're just playing into the game, right? - Right. - They're trying to put on the show that, hey, we're scared. We gotta have somebody watching us 'cause these people might come back and get us. So we have to walk through the alibis of Eric and Lyle that they would give to police for the day of the murder. So they said they played tennis in the morning and then they watched a tennis match on TV during the afternoon. - You never get enough tennis. - No, and we didn't talk about it a lot, but they were good tennis players and then they spent the afternoon shopping at a mall. - Not just any mall. - The Beverly Center. - Yeah. - Right, I mean, they're not gonna go to Podunk mall. - No. - They're rich kids. - They want the best. - They go to the rich kids mall. - Yeah, get the new Air Jordan's. - They would tell the police that they left the house at about 8 p.m. to go see the new James Bond movie License to Kill. - Is that Pierce Bronson? - Well his name is not Pierce Bronson. It's Pierce Brosnan. - Yeah. - Or that guy. - But I think you might be right about the first part. (laughs) But they would also say that they were going to a very specific theater, Westwood Village, but they don't do either of these. They change their mind and they end up going to see Batman at a completely different theater. - Michael Kitten, huh? - Well, you're just, you're on a roll, aren't you? - I'm Batman. - They told the police that when they got home, they saw smoke in the house, which police thought was very strange because when they were on the scene, they saw no smoke. But the one thing that Lyle tells the police early on is his theory is that the mob wanted to kill his parents and this is what he told them when they would ask him who could it possibly be. - What in doubt? - Blame them off. - Yeah. - But because Eric and Lyle were not considered suspects at this time, they weren't given the test that would have determined whether or not they had gunshot residue on their hand. So the autopsies are completed and we have to talk about them. We mentioned the shotgun blast to the back of Jose's head and the corner would measure this as four by five inches. - That's like a picture frame. - It's massive. They said it was large enough for an adult to completely put their fist through. - Easily disgusting. - Now when Kitty's autopsy came out, one of the things that was revealed because she had been shot so many times, they determined that she had been shot with different types of shotgun pellets. So originally when Eric and Lyle went in and they were loaded, they were using Gibbs a shotgun shell that had bigger steel, almost like ball bearings in it. - Right. - But when they ran out of ammo and they had to go back to their trunk, all they had was like bird shot, much smaller pellets. - Yeah. - So this is how they came up with the theory that at some point the killer had to reload. - Yeah, had to stop, go get more ammo. - Because it was of a different kind. The corner would also note the shots to the left knees of both Kitty and Jose. And please kind of latch onto this because they think maybe this is backing up Lyle's theory that this was a mob hit. So Gibbs, now we have to talk about what Eric and Lyle do after the murders. So the first thing they have to do is they have to bury their parents and they have this lavish ceremony on August 25th, 1989. But they show up an hour late to their own parents funeral. And again, you have to talk about the difference between the two brothers. You know, Eric is a mess, look like he'd been crying for days. Lyle seems like he's totally unaffected, completely calm during this ceremony. And then three days later, they have another service back in New Jersey. And this was more of a traditional church service and Lyle would talk for about 30 minutes on how much his parents meant to him, how upset he was about it. But Eric couldn't talk at all. And people that attended the service said that Eric was distraught. He cried the whole time. He was completely upset. And again, Lyle wasn't. Now he talked about how he was, but he wasn't showing those emotions. - His actions didn't speak it. - Yeah, his words did, but his actions didn't. But Gibbs, what people didn't know at either one of these services is that Lyle and Eric Menendez had already gone on an unbelievable spending spree. This is, you know, within days of the murder before either one of the memorial services, they had bought cars, it bought a lot of designer clothes, jewelry, and it was said that they even bought Rolexes to the tune of $15,000 a piece to wear to the funerals. So if that's not throwing off some red flags, you know, it's going too later on when people realize what they done. - Sure. - So the brothers are spending money like it's water. And we talked about the cars, right? Lyle bought a Porsche. You know, he didn't go out and buy a Honda Civic. He bought an expensive Porsche, Eric bought a Jeep Wrangler, which is a little more modest. At one point, it was said that Lyle had racked up $90,000 on his American Express card, $90,000 Gibbs. - That's insane. - That is a lot of money. Now, we have to talk about money because Lyle and Eric thought that they were going to get a shit ton of money. But what they would find out is that they were only going to get about $2 million a piece from their parents' estate. And they're not happy about this. They had been expecting a lot more money because they thought their dad Jose was worth a lot more. And I think he was worth a lot more. There was talk that he possibly could have put some of his money in offshore accounts that they couldn't get access to. But either way, they're pissed at this point. And both brothers would make a series of bad decisions involving money. You know, we talked about Lyle wanting to open a restaurant years earlier. Well, now he had the money to do so. So he opens up a restaurant in Princeton, New Jersey. And it was some kind of chicken wing place or something like that. And I don't know what the name of the restaurant was before, but he ends up changing the name to Mr. Buffalo's. And apparently, people had actually liked the restaurant that he bought because the name was very well known around town. But after he changed the name and he made a few other changes to the restaurant, he started him ringing money. And then you have to look at Eric. He had this idea that he was going to put on a concert. And he invested $40,000 in this concert. And the guy that he was working with took off with this $40,000. And then Eric makes the decision that he wants to try to become a pro tennis player. And we talked about these guys and their tennis, man. They were into their tennis. And he hires a private coach to the tune of $60,000. And then he spends more money on top of that, traveling to tournaments. And-- but I mean, this was all the waste of money. He was never going to be able to be a pro tennis player, no matter what he did. They're just starting fires with their money, man. Well, they might as well have been. Yeah. I mean, they would have got as much out of it if they'd just lit it on fire and threw it up in the air. Yeah. I mean, they're just going through it. But again, you have to talk about decision-making gives. These guys are not good decision-makers. They really haven't been their whole life, I don't think. They made a decision to murder their parents. That wasn't a good decision. So it should come as no surprise that any decisions they make around money are not going to be very good at either. So we got to get back to Detective Zeller, because he's trying to solve the murder of Jose and Kitty. They've got some suspects. They have some theories. And a lot of those centered around the fact that Jose-- he actually had a good amount of enemies. You know, a man in a position like that, acting the way he did. We talked about it. Kind of cutthroat, working his way up in the business, he's bound to make a lot of enemies. So you know they're looking at all those people. They're also interviewing Kitty's friends. And it's at this point that one of Kitty's friends tells Detective Zeller that she wants to be a detective. if the boys could have done this. And I think what she actually says to police is that Eric and Lyle just always seemed to be putting on an act and that there was just always something a little bit off about them. So by the end of 1989, the brothers had spent more than $1 million. Gibbs, that's almost hard to do. I mean, the murder occurred in August and in the span of what, four months. Yeah. So you're spending $250,000 a month, let's call it? That draws attention to yourself. Detectives pick up on that. Sure. And they start to look a little bit harder at Eric and Lyle Menendez. And one thing they learn is that the brothers had hired a computer expert to erase all the files on their parents' computer at the end of August 1989. Now that's suspicious as hell. It's extremely suspicious. And what would come out around this erasing of the computer memory is that Lyle had found out that there was a new will that his parents had made. Remember, they had threatened to cut Eric and Lyle out of the will if they didn't get it together. So what Lyle did is he deleted the new copy that was on the computer and he made another one. And then he called this computer expert to ensure that no one could go in and retrieve that old file. So again, we talk about these kids making a lot of bad decisions. We talked about the fact that they didn't get good grades in school, but they're pretty cunning, I think, gives in a lot of ways when it comes to trying to cover up some of these tracks. Now they're stupid as hell about spending all that money. - Absolutely. - I mean, that's really what drew the attention of the police. But there's some other things that they did that I guess you could call-- - Savvy? - Savvy. No, I think Savvy's a good word. So it's towards the end of October that seller, no, that detective Zeller interviews Eric again because he had heard a rumor that the brothers at this point are not getting along. And it's during this interview that Eric is going to tell the detective that Lyle is spending all their money. He's starting to act like their father, Jose, and Eric is worried at this point that Lyle's trying to get his share of the money. Now after this interview with the detective, Eric tries to get in touch with Lyle 'cause I think he's starting to get scared at this point. But he's not able to get in touch with Lyle. So what he does is he reaches out to his therapist, Dr. Ozeal, and Dr. Ozeal is gonna play a major role in this case. So he goes to CEOzeal on October 31, and the doctor is trying to get Eric to deal with his feelings. He's trying to get Eric to talk and open up, and at one point Eric cracks, and he opens up to the therapist saying, "We did it, we killed our parents." And he goes on to tell Dr. Ozeal the whole story of basically how this thing transpired. And it was that the brothers were watching a show called The Billionaires Boys Club. - Boy, I remember that. - I don't remember it. - You don't remember that? - Oh yeah. - Which is strange 'cause normally I do and you don't. - Yeah. - So we're flip-flopping. - Flip-flopping. - But as they're watching this show, they're talking about their lives, and especially what would happen if their dad, Jose, followed through with the threat of cutting them out of the will. And think about that Gibbs. Think about how these kids grew up. They were privileged. They'd been given everything. I don't think either one of these kids had to work for a damn thing that they ever got. And imagine thinking that you're gonna be set for life because your dad's rich. And then all of a sudden your dad says, "You know what? I'm gonna cut you off. I'm gonna cut you out of the will completely." Because Eric and Laumannendez had no money of their own. And this is when they made the decision that they had to kill their dad. But to do that, they would have to kill their mom as well. It would have to be a package deal to get away with it. - Ain't for them to get the life insurance money and everything else. - Oh, that's a great point. Not only to get away with it, but you're right. If they don't kill their mom, their mom is in control of the money and not them. Now, imagine what this therapist is thinking. As Eric is spilling all of these secrets to him. And at some point, he stops Eric. And he gets Eric to call Laumannendez again and he wants Laumannendez to come in as well. And when Laumannendez gets there, Eric's still talking. Now he's telling the doctor about how they bought the shotguns in San Diego and how they planned out the crime so that they would be able to get away with it. Eric was even as detailed to say that they had grabbed up all of the shotgun shell casings and they knew that they didn't have to do anything with their fingerprints because they lived there. So police finding their fingerprints at the crime scene, that wasn't gonna be weird at all. And then they filled in the missing details and then they filled in the missing details of the time period from when the murder occurred until the brothers got back to the house and were able to call 911. And what they tell Dr. Ozeo is that they drove out to a canyon discarded the shotguns. They dumped their bloody clothing and all of the shell casings and a dumpster at a gas station. And then they went home and made the 911 call. So again, Gibbs, you have to look at some of these things that the brothers did and I don't wanna make it sound like I'm giving them credit. I think what I'm saying is it really shows the length that they went to, the planning. Again, this was not a spur of the moment thing. They had planned a lot of this out. Now you can only imagine what Lyle is thinking as he gets to Dr. Ozeo's office and he realizes that Eric has told the doctor everything. And at one point, Lyle threatens to kill Dr. Ozeo if he says anything to anyone. But this is not the only time that the brothers are gonna meet with the doctor because they meet with him again just a little bit over a week later on November 2nd. And they threaten Dr. Ozeo again that he better keep his mouth shut but what the brothers didn't know is that Dr. Ozeo was recording the sessions. One of Eric's friends would go to the police as well and would tell a story about a visit that he had with Eric not long after the murders occurred and that Eric had asked this guy if he wanted to know how it happened, meaning how the murders took place. And he walked through basically the same kind of story to his friend but he was couching this conversation Gibbs as saying, you know, well, it probably happened this way. It could have happened this way. He didn't really confirm anything. So the police were, I mean, they were happy that this guy came to tell them the information but at this point, they don't have enough to actually charge Eric and Laumanninde's with murder. And the DA actually gets this friend of Eric's to wear a wire, go back to talk to Eric and try to get a confession on tape but it doesn't work because Eric actually recounts all the things he said and said that he'd been lying the whole time that he and Lael were innocent. They had nothing to do with it. So a few months go by, the police, the DA, everybody is hard at work on this case. And the one thing that they're really worried about is that the estate is gonna be settled and that Eric and Laumanninde's are gonna get the money that they wanted all along. 'Cause at this point, they haven't gotten the full amount. The police are trying to track down the shotguns. I mean, they're doing a lot of work on this case, Gibb. I mean, they're checking out gun dealers, any place that sells shotguns. But Detective Zeller would later say that he never thought they would find the guns anyway. He didn't think that the boys were stupid enough to buy the guns in their own names but the big break in this case comes March 5th, 1990. And this is when a woman named Joodle-On Smith goes to detectives and tells them that Dr. O'Zeele had asked her to eavesdrop. drop on the therapy session that he had with the brothers back in October of 1989. Now, I gotta talk about Joodle on Smith because she was the mistress of this Dr. Ozeo and what she would tell police is that she heard the brother shouting and fighting with each other about how Eric had told Dr. Ozeo what happened. And during this argument between Lyle and Eric, she says that she heard them say, well, now we have to kill this doctor because he's the only person that knows and he's the only person that can put us in prison. She goes on to say that Eric said during this argument that he didn't wanna kill anyone else and he was not gonna kill Dr. Ozeo and he left the room crying. But the bombshell that she laid on police was that she told them how Dr. Ozeo had been taping these sessions and that he had all of the evidence stored and on those tapes were the confessions to the murders of Jose and Kitty Menendez. So Gibbs, as we're wrapping up this part one, I mean, there are so much more to come in this case. We're just getting started. - Just getting started, just getting into it. What has started is the downward slide for Eric and Lyle Menendez 'cause things are about to get fubard for both of them. - Fubar. - Fubar. - Fubar. - Because on March 8, 1990, detectives, they get a search warrant to get the tapes from Dr. Ozeo. And we gotta talk about these tapes, man, before we end this episode. There were 17 tapes in all, seven pages of detailed notes and it's pretty quickly after Ozeo starts playing the tapes for detectives that they're finally able to hear what really happened to Lyle and Kitty Menendez. And this is not from a second-hand source, right? I mean, they're hearing this from the mouths of the killers themselves. So they take the tapes, they take the notes, everything gets put into police evidence and taken to the LA County Courthouse in Santa Monica. The only thing left for detectives to do is to arrest Eric and Lyle Menendez for the murder of their parents. But that's gonna come in episode two. - So why are the tapes confidential, you know, Dr. - Patient privilege. - Yeah, I think they are, but there are circumstances where they become no longer privileged. - Oh. - I think, I don't know all that. - For some rules within the rules. - I think there is some rules around that. Obviously, they were able to get a search warrant from a judge to compel Dr. Ozeo to hand them over. - Hand them over. - But I don't know, I'd have to look into that. There's something about if a person is about ready to harm themselves or if they've harmed other, I forget. - There's an out clause. - There is something like that. I have to look it up. Somebody will tell us, 'cause we have some, - That's true. - We have some doctors, we have some therapists. - Yeah. - And we love it when people tell us. And call, give you a dumbass too. When you send the message, 'cause he asks the question. - Or, not. - No, don't call him that, but we take it all in stride. All right, Gibbs, so a lot more to come in episode two. - Right. - We're gonna get into the arrest. We're gonna get into the circus, which is this trial. - Yeah. - That's what most people will remember. - Yeah, I mean, it is a circus. And this is where, I don't wanna ruin it, not that I'm ruining it, a lot of people know this case, but for anybody that doesn't, there's so many things that come out at trial about why the brothers committed this murder. - Yeah. - It's not a matter of if they did. - Your get-ar-spin on it. - Yeah. - All right, so that's it for part one of the Menendez brothers. We do have a couple of voicemails, Gibbs, that I wanna play. So let's do that. - Hey, Bill, I'm fellow, this is Johnny Mac. I'm listening to both of your podcasts. I'm gonna kick out of 'em. It's pretty good. I just listened to the Colin Ferguson one. I thought, well, I'm on New York transplant to the Dayton area. And there's another New York one you might be interested in. Bernard Gett, a vigilante on subway. It's a pretty interesting story there. But you guys might wanna check it out. - Johnny Mac. - I like that name. - I do too. So a New York native somehow makes his way to Dayton, Ohio. - D-A-Y, man. - Love to hear that story. How you get from New York to Dayton, Ohio. - Probably with the U-D. - I don't know, but he's got a cool ass accent. I'm digging that accent. - I see playing cards with them. - Yeah. - Yeah. - Maybe smoking a Stogie, you got a beer, you're playing with, there's Johnny Mac. - Yeah. - Gibby, lefty. - Oh, lefty. Watch out for a lefty. - Smokey. - Smokey. - Little hands. - But he has really big gigantic hands. - Yeah. - Shorty. - Yeah. - No. Thanks, Johnny Mac. Appreciate it, brother. And, you know, to talk about Bernard Gett's very fascinating story. - Remember that one? - He's on the list. But the list is so big, Gibb's right now. The hard part is deciding what to do next. They really is. - It is. - It's always tough. - Yep, it really is. - Hi, my name is Lauren. I'm calling from Travis 30 Michigan. I just want to say that I love your guys' podcast. I listen to it almost every night. I re-listen to podcasts that I've already listened to. All your episodes are great, and I look forward to it every single week. Thank you so much for all you guys do. Have a great day, bye. - Wow, I love it when they backtrack. - Oh, yeah. Do some backtrack and listen to it again. - You might pick something up that Gibby said, or Miss said that you didn't hear the first time. - Or you just want to hear it again, Lauren. - Now, Lauren, we appreciate that voicemail very much and the kind words. That's the kind of stuff that makes all the hard work that goes in to putting out an episode. - Sure. - Yeah. - When you hear somebody say, "We love what you're doing," or the other thing we hear sometimes on social media, you know, your podcast helped me get through a hard time, or I'm driving a truck for 10 hours a day and man, it really helps me get through the day. That's cool stuff. - Yeah. - That's all you got. - No. - Yeah. I always think you're gonna expand on it. And there's just nothing after the yeah. - I just leave it at that. Yeah. - You're a man of few words, but the words that you do say, except for the rights in the yes, but other than that, the words that you choose so carefully, they're powerful, man. - It's not what I say. (laughing) Say it. - That's good to say. It's not what I say. It's what I say, but it's not what I wanted to say. (laughing) You gotta love the give, man. All right, so that is another episode of True Crime All the Time. So for Mike. - Hey, Gabby. - Stay safe and keep your own time ticking. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)