♪ what happened? who is the person that was shot? >> my mom and my dad. >> your mom and dad? >> my mom and my dad. >> okay. ♪ >> people assume that if you have money you have no problems, and you're certainly not going do anything like kill your parents. >> now, suddenly enter tiktok. amazing. the menendez story going viral in 2021. >> i don't believe they got

fair trial. >> i think they're seen as the victims of a less enlightened time. >> i would say people of my generation predominantly do believe it was an act of self-defense. >> who could imagine, 30 years of a double murder, that gen z, on tiktok, would reconsider the menendez case. ♪ >> okay. >> tiktok has been this hub for gen z in so many ways. and now we're seeing them kind of turn their eye towards the criminal justice system. >> it's not supposed to happen in beverly hills. a movie executive and his wife were brutally slain in their >> as i went into the room, i just started firing.

>> what was in front of you? >> my parents. >> millions of young people are looking back online. and they're re-examining old news stories from the '90s and 2000s particularly and looking at them with a fresh set of eyes. >> the menendez brothers story was the most sensational murder trials of the 1990s. you saw spoiled rich kids spinning out of control. >> so when the videos first started coming out the content being created around the menendez brothers was about how hot they were. >> the first videos that my son showed me on tiktok were a lot of young women, who were lip synching to the britney spears song, "mama, i'm in love with a criminal." ♪ >> people are like "oh, who is this hot guy on the courtstand?" and then people started doing the research into the case and people were like "oh, this is sick and twisted.

like, this is so wrong." >> it's a lot of kids going back with a fresh set of eyes and a different set of values. >> this movement started when courttv published the footage and for the first time people could be jurors themselves. >> people in my generation wanted to defend the brothers. these kids went through horrible things and it wasn't right what happened to them. >> they said they did it because they were sexually abused. the question is, does that lessen the responsibility for murder? >> i think there is such an emotional response because this case involves sexual abuse of children. >> the emotion was so real to me. raw, authentic, i believed it. i don't think someone could fake that kind of emotion. >> these kids have a lot of power to shape the cultural narrative, you know? things start trending.

and before you know it, you have millions of people that aren't even on tiktok paying attention to this case again. >> my name is lyle menendez. i have been incarcerated 31 years. i am the kid that did kill his parents, and no river of tears has changed that and no amount of regret has changed it. you are often defined by a few moments of your life, but that's not who you are in your life. your life is your totality of it. i think i will end up dying still being in the nightmare of this horrifying event and tragedy.

>> bring down the berlin wall. ♪ >> lyle and eric menendez seemed to have it all. they lived in this fairy tale world of wealth and country clubs. they were top flight tennis players. one at princeton, the other heading to ucla. the father was a powerful hollywood executive. >> they were in a mansion in bev beverly hills. >> people assume that if you have money, you have no problems. and you are certainly not going to do anything like kill your parents. because you have it made. and it turns out that rich people have dysfunctional

families just as much as poor people. one kid killing the parents is a bad seed. two kids killing the parents is a bad family. ♪ >> jose menendez was an immigrant. he wanted to make good. he was very driven to become the american success story. >> he emigrated from cuba at about the age of 16. >> he was the only boy. and mother adored him. and emphasized as much in his male image. so much so, he became a little bit of a bully in cuba. and he became a little bit of a monster to the parents. it was hard to control him. >> a cuban immigrant coming to the country as a teenager with very little. driving, driving, driving through industry after industry. rental cars, the music industry,

hollywood production, one after the other, with ferocious drive and talent. >> they met when they were both students at southern illinois university. >> kitty was my younger sister. she was stunningly beautiful. and i mean beautiful on the outside and even more so inside. jose saw in her what everybody else saw in her. and she saw this handsome cuban. they got married in college, and after graduation, they moved to new york. >> a sniper's bullet cut down dr. king. >> the most significant change in their marriage took place when eric and lyle were born. kitty had dreams of becoming an actress.pafter her sons were bo work. you need to take care of our sons. >> the boys were extremely

spoiled. i would say, there has to be some discipline in their life. and i think it would be smart to hold them accountable for some of the things they do. and she could say, don't tell me how to raise my boys. she wanted lyle and eric to be as competitive as she was. and as her husband was. >> when i think of jose and his sons, the word that pops into my head is ownership. these were his prize thoroughbreds. his sons. they were going to reflect his own glory. and if they didn't, god help them. >> the world that the brothers grew up in was very affluent. and it started in princeton, new jersey. >> jose had success on both coasts. first the leafy precinct of princeton, new jersey on the east coast. then all the way in california,

beverly hills. one of the luxurious places in the world. >> in princeton, they were a step above everybody else, rich kids. princeton was about old money. you didn't show off. but they were different. >> as jose changed jobs and became involved in different companies, this beautiful home in the center of princeton came on the market. and they just both fell in love with it. and they wound up buying it. so this is up here with a beautiful reservoir pond behind the home. so beautiful. she was so proud of it. >> jose and kitty wanted the public image of their family to be perfect. one of the ways they did that, they did their sons' homework, then they would take tests in

school and they would fail their tests. they would tell them who they could date and be friends with. >> lyle and eric wanted at all times to please dad. >> the affluence was all around them. but they were expected to work for it. and the work was to become tennis stars. >> they would be at the country club owning the scene, they would have beautiful girls on their arms, and go to ivy league, top-notch colleges. >> he gave them everything in new york. in that extent, he was showing off through the kids. >> lyle was going to be the better, improved version of jose. for jose menendez, having a son go to an ivy league school like princeton was the end of the american dream. but lyle had mediocre grades,

was not a great student. he really wasn't princeton material. he was a very strong tennis player. and so through a combination of his tennis abilities and also jose made a $50,000 donation to princeton, he was able to get his son into the school. >> but lyle was flunking out of princeton. not only academically, but socially. he was doing things he wasn't supposed to do. >> he was accused of plagiarizing a paper at one point. and he was suspended for that. jose rushed in to meet with a suspension.y to stop the t his pleas didn't work. >> he was never satisfied. lyle and eric, i think, had a strong fear of dad. it was so obvious. but it was not spoken. >> jose was such a dominant force in that family that the brothers looked at him, it was like he was the sun and blotted everything else out.

>> the impression i got about jose's character was that he could be charming when he chose to. but his basic nature was very abusive, and he was abusive to his sons especially and to his wife. >> describe your relationship with your father. >> brutal. painful. torturous. and yet i admired him because he was so strong and he was -- he was everything that success was. that i was taught that success was. and i thought that he was the most powerful and brilliant person i had ever met. >> to me, the menendez brothers became homicidal monsters that were shaped by jose menendez. ♪

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♪ my fellow americans, identi i've spoken to you on many occasions and about many things. >> for 20 years, the menendez family had been living in princeton, new jersey. and then jose became an executive with carolco pictures and live entertainment, and the family moved to california in 1987. initially, the menendez family lived in the los angeles suburb of calabasas. >> and they were really, really proud to have this house that they had found there, and they were remodeling it. there was tennis courts and everything else available there, and this is just the most beautiful setting. >> i think the cheapest property in here isbly $2 milli, gs e wa frankie avalon raised his six children here. robert blake lived here. bruce jenner, when he was bruce jenner, had a house here. >> very spoiled, a lot of the kids.

a lot of kids got involved with drugs. >> this is mulholland highway just starting into calabasas. 25 years ago, this was all open land. erik and i used to come up here all the time. this is about 8 to 9 minutes from our high school. and we used to do some writing up here and look out over the valley. erik and i, we just hit it off from the beginning. we both were chess players. we were both thinkers. we were both kind of outside the box in school. we were in our rebellious phase and independent phase of 16, 17 years old. and we just had something that clicked. he was a little bit different. he was pretty ostentatious, and he was flamboyant but well liked. he would do things like walk into a store, and if somebody wouldn't immediately help him, he would jump up on a table and start throwing shoes and say, "i'm here to buy something." he made himself known, and he was a presence. and he wanted what he wanted and found a way to get it. >> erik and lyle menendez kept

screwi up. they were hanging out with a group of friends that began doing what was called hot prowls, in which they would sneak into a house when nobody was there and think about committing a burglary. but it was just a group of suburban kids that were, you know, dreaming about the fantasy of committing a crime. at one point, lyle menendez actually committed a burglary with several of his friends. >> lyle had taken some things from a girlfriend's house and showed his little brother that he had done this crime. and his little brother said, "well, i can do the same thing." and erik went in and stole something, but then wanted to put it back before anybody knew. he just wanted to show his older brother that it could be done. >> the initial victims were the parents of some of their friends. and in the first burglary, over $100,000 of items were taken out of the house, including cash and jewelry taken from a safe. >> now, it was my understanding that their burglaries consisted

of backing up a moving van to a house that was empty and cleaning out the house, which is different from breaking into a house and stealing the family's silver. what's that about? i think they were practicing to be criminals. i think they thought being criminals would -- would be a fun way to earn a living. >> they just got bored with life, and they wanted excitement. they wanted challenges. and robbing houses was a challenge, something they tried to get away with, and they didn't think they'd be caught. >> they wind up getting arrested, and jose, in his inimitable way, decided that he was going to quickly put it to rest. he didn't want it in the newspapers, and he went out and he visited every one of the homes that had been robbed. and he asked them what the value was of anything that was missing. and they gave him a number, a price, of what they felt that it was worth. he apologized, and his son apologized, and he wrote them a check right on the spot. >> joe, when he found out that the children had been arrested

the main message was, "how stupid of you to get caught. you're like sheep that follow. you're not leaders." and he was ashamed by them getting caught. because i think jose thought that life was about winning. and probably it was not as important how you got there. >> i think the parents lost control of them, in part because they were in a culture where money can buy you anything. not just the bmw or the designer jeans. it can buy you a free pass out of trouble. >> when poor kids do a burglary, like, they go to their neighbor's house and take the -- the big screen tv. they -- they go to juvenile court or they go to -- on probation or something like that. when rich kids do it, they go to the psychiatrist. so i'm fairly certain that that was part of their court ordered treatment for their burglary problem. >> all i know is that they both got probation. they gave the stuff back, and i

think it was shortly thereafter they moved down to beverly hills and left the calabasas area. and jose kind of said, "let's distance ourselves from the calabasas crowd." >> there are people, a great number of people, who think that you two are spoiled brats. what do you say to them? >> i don't know that there's anything i can say to them. because i came from a family of wealth doesn't make me spoiled. i'm just a normal kid. >> oh, erik, you're a normal kid who killed your parents. >> yeah, i know. >> and you still say you're a normal kid? >> well, i didn't have normal experiences, but i am. i did that, and there's not a day that goes by that i don't think about what happened and wish that i could -- i could take that moment back. >> is it hard for you, lyle? >> it is. it is difficult to be -- the whole 28 years defined by a day.

>> lyle menendez was the alpha male of these two brothers. he was the one with the charisma, with a kind of sinister intelligence. high functioning but cunning. and more than anything, he had a willpower like his father who mastered hollywood by being ruthless and cunning and capable of destroying adversaries in business. >> i think the menendez brothers were close because they were fighting the common enemy, which was their father. he believed that life is like war and that anything that you do to achieve your end is fine, including, it turns out, killing your parents. mcdonald's new crispy chicken sandwich. from the makers of the world's most-stolen fries. the juicy chicken sandwich...

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get that convertible bmw. some had multiple cars, you know, a mercedes, a porsche, and a lamborghini. >> maybe kids have a little more privileges, but i don't really think it's different from anywhere else. >> some you could see that their value system was upside down. >> jose and kitty both were really having second thoughts about having been so generous. she was very concerned about the irresponsibility of lyle. and he just felt that he could anything, and it didn't make any difference whether it was ethical or not. >> at a certain point erik and lyle menendez became a disappointment to their parents. jose menendez didn't approve of the women that lyle was dating. >> lyle was a very fascinating young man to women. so lyle had women all the time, and they were purported to be victoria secret models.

>> lyle is now in his 20s. he doesn't stay in college, and my sister kitty began to recognize that they had essentially raised a playboy. and they took his credit cards away to try to educate him. he was really upset. and what he started to do was steal their credit cards, and go out and buy what we wanted to buy anyway. >> erik was a disappointment in other ways. in whatever joe thought would be the right way for a young man to behave. >> i met erik menendez when i was doing a photo shoot in beverly hills. he was natural in front of the camera. he was very comfortable. i don't think erik had really the physical attributes to be a working model, but he was photogenic. i think erik was struggling to find his way, and i don't know

the insides of what went on in eir use, because he didn't talk about it. i don't know if it was awful. i don't know the truth about that. but that last photo shoot, something was a little bit different. and he was quieter. and he was a little bit more withdrawn, a little bit more humble. but when i look at the pictures, and when i think about it now, i can see that there was a difference. those pictures to me look very lonely and haunting. and i'm not so sure that i was looking into his soul, but in retrospect, there was something coming out of him that i didn't see on a regular basis. >> in the late '80s, early '90s, what people may have forgotten is that being gay was not that acceptable. it was just, i mean gay marriage was decades off at that time. from what i knew of jose menendez, he would not have been the kind of father who would have embraced that. >> did your father accuse you of being gay? is it one of the things he used to say to tear you down?

>> yes. >> the prosecutor brought up the fact that you might have been a homosexual, and that this might have caused some of the fury on your father's part. >> yes, he did. >> i didn't, i didn't hear about girlfriends. >> they were there. >> i guess what i just have to say to you is, are you gay? >> no. i'm not gay. >> kitty was so upset the way things were happening, and she was trying very, very hard to understand why they were doing what they were doing. >> she was also very worried about the state of her marriage because she had discovered that jse had been carrying on an eight-year affair with a woman in new york. dippnted, s concerned upsetting that jose was ing to leave her. >> i don't think they trusted a. i don'k they ever touche >> jose menendez, unknown to the mistress in new york, also had a woman that he was seeing here in

los angeles. >> she was explaining to me what the situation was, and how it -- how it hurt her. and the one thing she said to me, and i'll never forget it, she said, "you know the most difficult thing for me, brian, is that i've lost my hero." >> jose menendez was carrying on affairs with a woman in new york, a woman in l.a., and he was also being supplied with, uh, prostitutes by a madam here in los angeles. >> it appeared to me that kitty menendez was the maid and the chauffeur, and that the three men in her life were dominant. i think that her whole personality had been erased by the family, and that she didn't have the ability, or the wherewithal, to stand up to her husband. >> i knew that kitty didn't have a lot of friends, and she did have a very private life. but i know that she loved her sons, and she loved jose. >> this is a woman who was

enduring the dissolution of her family. her husband was cheating on her. her sons had turned into criminal louts, and she couldn't handle it. tried to keep up a brave face with some people, popped pills when it got too much for her. >> at one point she was rushed to a hospital after taking an overdose of valium. people at the hospital felt that she had actually tried to commit suicide. she told jose's sister she wished the brothers had never been born. >> describe your relationship with your mother. >> my mother was a person in a lot of pain and she was alcoholic, and she was suicidal. >> there was not a lot of communication, but she -—i saw her as -— i heard and saw her get beaten by my dad. >> your mother was battered. >> battered. >> physically or emotionally? >> physically. certainly emotionally. >> and i would try to help her through it.

we went through it together. >> i don't think she was depressed in beverly hills. what i did see is the situation that took place with lyle. lyle was stressing her a lot. and the thing with calabasas just about broke her emotional back when she realized how far her son would go to basically have whatever he wanted. and so it -- it -- it was very, very painful to the two of them, but i think it was especially painful to kitty. >> and then, in the spring of 1989, jose menendez had several conversations with his brother-in-law, carlos baralt, in which he told him he was disappointed in his sons, and that he was thinking about taking them out of his will. so everybody was starting to have problems, and those problems were starting to spin the family out of control. did you know that every single flush flings odors onto your soft surfaces? then they get release back into the air, so you smell them later. ew right? that's why febreze created small spaces.

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we wrote a screenplay, we

wrote several screenplays. we were ambitious young writers with a lot of ideas. and we said, well, let's write murder mysteries. >> erik wrote a script about a boy that kills his parents to collect the insurance. and he brought that by for me to read and give him my opinion. >> a gloved hand is seen gripping the doorknob and turning it gently. good evening, mother. good evening father. his voice is of attempted compassion but the hatred overwhelms it. all light is extinguished and the camera slides down the stairs as screams are heard behind. we needed the characters to get money somehow and thought, "well, here's an interesting way to do it." and it showed the darwinistic tendencies of -- of the child toward the parents. remove them and then i'm free and i can do what i want. but as time went by, erik took that screenplay and reworded the first four or five pages to exactly what happened at the scene of the crime. and so people thought, "well, maybe this is the precursor to what actually happened." >> he's already got the idea and he's already beginning to

execute it in his mind, the crime that he will eventually commit -- murdering his parents for money, for the insurance money. it was powerful evidence that he'd been not just thinking about it, but playing with the idea, scoping it out, writing it down. >> i thought that it was probably pretty unreal, a bit of nonsense. i didn't contemplate that he was really planning to do such a thing, not on any day did i think that. >> if you looked at the menendez brothers as teenagers, you saw a spoiled rich kid spinning out of control. they were -- they were literally criminals. they were stealing, they were robbing, but the viciousness that lyle and erik menendez eventually demonstrated, i think that has its seeds in their relationship with their father. >> any way you cut it, jose menendez was the kind of person that people cowered from. everybody described jose

menendez as someone you should be afraid of, someone who was always expecting perfection and never got it. >> when we went to their house, there was a ferret, always. and the ferret died one day, and kitty and joe assumed that one of their dogs had killed it. and one of their dogs was a black, very aggressive dog. they had aggressive dogs. the children opened the refrigerator one day and found the dog's head inside. >> on the tuesday before the murders, lyle menendez and his mother, kitty, were having an argument. >> she got so upset she began striking the older brother and she even ripped off his toupee. >> and erik was actually in the hallway and he saw this happen and he didn't even know that his brother was wearing a toupee. >> which his father had forced

him to wear because he started having thinning hair. >> and the brothers had a very emotional conversation in which they agreed that there were so many secrets in the family. >> and at the point, erik broke down and he started crying. and his brother said, what's wrong with you, what are you crying about? and erik said, "dad has been doing things to me." >> when lyle told me about the abuse, he was eight years old at the time. one night, i was in my room changing the sheets on my bed and lyle came in saying that he was afraid to sleep in his own bed because his father and him had been touching each other down there. i went upstairs and got kitty. by her demeanor, i could tell that she was not believing any of this. >> there was certainly no indication of any kind that there was ever any abuse. >> he had sexually molested me before i was a teenager and it was a different, much different

experience than erik's. >> because you were little? >> because i was little, i guess. but it was difficult to be close to my father and yet have so much conflict in the home. >> i mean, it just didn't happen. it just didn't happen. i think the motive was strictly money. >> my impression was that their father had cut them off. i think somewhere, starting with lyle, there was a decision that this was just not going to be okay. it was not going to be okay to live in beverly hills and be paupers or to have less than they had. they got cut off and that wasn't cool. >> the source of the hatred wasn't that they wanted money, it was the sexual abuse. the source of the homicide was that how dare he take away the money. in other words, the two theories of this case aren't necessarily contradictory. >> i was with kitty in her beverly hills house and she was using her computer, and i said, "what are you doing with the computer?"

and she said, "i'm changing my will." and as i looked down the aisle of the house, i said to kitty, "lyle's hearing you. he's going to know that you're changing your will right now," and she said, "i don't care." she said, "they know i'm not going to give them any money." >> no, no, that's not how that occurred. there was a confrontation. it's very difficult to understand the emotion and the fear and the conflict that is building over the years to something like this. and it can't just -- it's difficult to just say "well, this is why this happened." >> there was going to be a violent confrontation at some point. >> and i thought in the end, i would probably be killed. when it was first revealed that i had told lyle that i was sexually molested by my father, my dad said to lyle, "you're gonna tell everyone and i'm not gonna let that happen." and that's when we bought the

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the week before they were murdered, i had lunch with kitty, she had never been happier. she said that she was getting along with jose. so she thought that everything was doing better. >> at that time there'd be good days, there'd be bad days. and kitty had a sense of hope, i think, as would be natural. she didn't want this family to split apart and all the secrets of it, perhaps, to spill out. she didn't want to lose what she had, and i think you can hear in her the last strands of hope for this family. >> august 20th, 1989, was an unusually warm, balmy evening in beverly hills. most of the neighbors who lived near the menendez mansion at

722 north elm drive had their windows open to let fresh air in. >> beverly hills is a quiet town. even the business district kind of folds up at 7:00. we average two murders a year and really don't know what you're in for when you get a murder call. >> what's the problem? what's the problem? >> someone killed my parents. >> pardon me? >> someone killed my parents. >> what? who? are they still there? >> yes! >> the people who -- >> no, no, no. >> were they shot? >> yes. >> they were shot? >> yes! >> what happened? >> have a hysterical person on. >> what happened? who is the person that was shot? >> my mom and my dad! >> your mom and dad? >> my mom and my dad! >> okay, hold on a second. okay, we're on our way over there with an ambulance.

>> 12 shots in the middle of beverly hills on a sunday night and no one calls the police? we're waiting at the house, no one shows up, and i still can't believe it. i'm sitting on the stairs afterwards thinking the police are going to be there in -- in seconds. they've got roving patrol. >> and people -- many, many people did hear the shots. many neighbors came in and said they heard all these shots, but nobody called because they just figured this is beverly hills, this doesn't happen in beverly hills. >> so you called the police, but at that point, you had already decided that you weren't going to say anything? >> we had decided that our feeling was not, we'll just explain what happened and it'll be okay. we were very stunned and we felt that we would go to jail, obviously, and we -- it was a selfish reason to just not want to have to go through that. >> you know, by this intersection, i could actually see the police tape and the police cars in front of the menendez house.

>> hello, this is the police department. >> yes. >> okay, i want you to come outside. okay? just come out the front door and -- >> i got to get my brother. >> you tell your brother everybody that's -- come outside. >> okay. okay. >> as we walked in the front door, the only thing i could really detect is the silence. it was just eerily quiet, it was so quiet inside. from the foyer was a staircase, and then in the back of the foyer was this library family room, which is where the murder occurred. the television was on so it was just a normal evening for them. >> kitty was wearing white, she was covered in blood. jose had a shotgun blast to the back of his head, blood everywhere. there was brain matter on the ceiling, on the windows. it was really horrendous.

>> when jose and kitty were found dead, the police didn't do what they normally do in a case like that. >> there are things that could've been done that night that would've proven that they were the killers. the murder weapons were in their cars. nobody bothered to look. >> both brothers had gunshot residue on their hands. >> at the time we felt they were victims, and you're not gonna press them because their parents just got blown away. >> a beverly hills criminal is going to be treated differently than a south central los angeles criminal because the police understand that the beverly hills criminal is gonna lawyer up, they're gonna file complaints. rich people view the police as being sort of lower than cleaning people, okay?sohat inf the way this case was prosecuted. >> the sons told police they left their parents at home to go to the movies. the pair said they came home from the movie and found their

parents lying dead in pools of blood. >> we didn't have an alibi. all we did was say we were at the movies. >> but they never checked you for gunpowder. you did fool the police. >> that day they didn't, and i bet you they've changed their policy. >> when i first heard joe and kitty had been murdered, i said with tears in my eyes, this is awful, the most awful thing i've ever heard. but what if it had been the kids? i don't know why i said that, but i must have had some basic instinct in the back of my head that told me that might be the case. >> i was in st. louis, in training for a new job, and i had my dog with me. i had my dalmatian puppy, and i was watching the news. >> jose was shot five times, once to the head and four others to the body. >> and i just about squeezed the life out of my dog. >> i had nightmares. i had nightmares about it.

i could see that house, and i could see them taking them out as i saw on tv the bodies. >> it took me a while to figure it out, and what it was is that i remembered that i had the script about the boy that kills his parents to collect the insurance. and that was a very chilling realization to me. >> tell me as clearly as you can why you murdered your parents. >> i was so afraid. i was running downstairs and i was crying, and my mother was on the couch and she had been drinking. and she said, "what's wrong with you?" and i said, "nothing, nothing, you wouldn't understand." and she said, "oh, i understand. what do you think i am, stupid?" and she told me that she had known all my life what my father was doing and lyle said to my mother, "are you gonna let this happen?" and she said to him, "you ruined this family." a few days before i had said to

myself, i am never gonna let my father touch me again. and just before the shootings, my dad told me to get to my room he was gonna come up, and there was gonna be sex, and it was like a explosion in my mind. no. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ new cor gloss. l'oreal's first toning gloss you use in the shower - no mixing. no damage. tones... glosses... conditions. it does it all! new le color gloss from l'oreal paris.

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i'm just a normal kid. >> oh, erik, you're a normal kid who killed your parents. >> i know. ♪ >> the pair said they came home from a movie, and found their parents lying dead in pools of blood. >> and what did you do after you reloaded? >> i ran around and shot my mom. >> for 12 years, erik menendez, was molested by his father. >> you saw cynical, vicious killers or you saw victims.

the sex abuse defense, the abuse excuse, was new. but now, 30 years later and on social media like tiktok, gen z is weighing in. >> they're re-examining stories. >> people started doing the research into the menendez case. they don't deserve to live the rest of their life in prison. >> i think they've gone through enough. and it's time that they come home. ♪ >> i was just living in the wake of what had happened. now you have secrets upon secrets.

you're not living in the reality of what has occurred and why it occurred with anyone in your life. you're almost like emotionally, you're a ghost. you're just living like a ghost among people that are alive. so you're just -- you're just adrift. >> entertainment executive jose menendez and his wife were slain in the family room of their beverly hills mansion by killers using 12-gauge shotguns. >> they were murdered, killed gangland style in cold blood. >> homicide detectives say it could have been a mob hit, contract killings. >> they tried to make it look like a mafia hit by the kneecapping. they told the police it was a mafia hit. >> the sons said they discovered the bodies when they arrived home several hours later. >> i've never seen anything like it. they weren't real. wax, they looked like wax. it's something that -- i've never seen my dad helpless.

you know, i think that possibly if lyle and i would have been home, maybe my dad would be alive. >> the police felt it necessary to start investigating the organized crime aspect, and they soon realized that was a dead end. they knew that the brothers had done it, but knowing it and proving it are two different things. >> i remember it was the morning after the murder. i pulled up to the house and then all of the sudden, my car door slammed open and erik jumped in and scared the hell out of me, and frantically said to me that they needed my husband's legal help. i said "erik, what's going on here? he says, "mrs. wright, my paren night," and i said "what?" he was not sad, not crying. no emotion whatsoever. who would think of legal advice the day of your parents' murder,

unless you're guilty. >> i don't know how much they thought they were gonna get, but i understand the estate was worth about $14 million at the time. >> in the days following the murders of jose and kitty menendez, erik menendez was a complete mess. he was emotionally distraught, and several days after the murders, craig cignarelli claims that erik menendez confessed to him and told him that he was responsible for the deaths of his parents. >> it was a friend of mine that called me and said, "dude, turn on the tv." >> how many shots do you think went off? >> about six in a row. >> my first instinct was to -- to call erik and get to erik and find out what happened. we went back to the house, and -- and eventually sat down at a chessboard, and he looked up from the chessboard and as he had his fingers on the pieces, he said, "do you wanna know what happened?" and i made a big mistake and said, "yes." i can remember him telling me where the blood and the skin landed, and literally being in the room where it happened.

it was a very intense, heavy moment. i realized that conversation was gonna change my life and change his life. and, you know, he had now burdened me with something that i was stuck with a -- a pretty heavy moral dilemma. >> so craig didn't know how to take that, whether he was saying it as a new plot for a new script or whether he did commit this murder. >> five weeks after the murders, erik and lyle menendez received an insurance policy payout of $400,000. >> and they went on a huge spending spree. i mean, if i killed my parents, i don't think i'd buy a porsche that first week. >> one kid bought a rolex watch, another, a brand new porsche, another bought a restaurant in princeton, new jersey. i mean, the list goes on and on. >> they weren't shattered and traumatized by grief. they were having a grand old time spending the money of the dead man. >> you went off on a spending spree.

i mean, i would think that you would be in such grief that you wouldn't be able to buy rolexes and invest in businesses. explain to me, let me understand. i'm, you know, i'm the public. >> lyle didn't buy anything without first approving it with my uncle or my aunt. > you weren't just two greedy kids who wanted a lot of money. that's what you're saying? >> i didn't know what to do with the money. i went to -- it got to a point where i have all this money and so much pain, i don't know what to do with it and -- >> do you still think about the night of the murder? >> every day. i had a dream once that was my mother, having been shot, hugging me and me hugging her, and i woke up crying. and i woke up, and i said, "i'm back in the nightmare. i want to go back." i can never forgive myself. i just could not face god. i could not face god with what i had done. it's hard to live with that, and i thought of suicide and for six

months i was in agony. and i just wanted someone to talk to, and i couldn't tell anyone. >> you went to your psychologist, dr. oziel, and told him that you had committed this crime. you were in torment and you told him. >> i felt that i was the worst person on earth and i -- i -- i -- it got to a point where i couldn't live with myself anymore, and i needed help. and so i went to him, and that is what the catalyst was for me getting arrested, and lyle. >> erik had confessed the killings to dr. oziel. dr. oziel then went on to tape further conversations with erik and lyle and ask them details about the killings, so he could get on tape their confessions. and he'd told his lover, judalon smyth, that if anything were to happen to him, the tapes are in the lockbox. go and get them and give them to police and they'll know what happened. >> she's the one that came to the police and said, "i have information about this oziel, who, parenthetically, is the

psychologist for erik and lyle menendez." >> they didn't talk about shooting the father a whole lot. they did talk that they had to keep shooting the mother. >> erik filled dr. oziel in on many details about what had happened, including where they bought the shotguns. >> abc news has learned that two 12-gauge shotguns were purchased at this sporting goods store in san diego on august 18th, two days before the murders. >> and the following day is when we got warrants to recover these tapes and arrested lyle. >> i couldn't believe it. the family was on the phone to each other. we were talking back and forth. how could this possibly be? >> the glow of innocence once surrounding the menendez brothers is now shadowed by charges of murder. >> i thought the whole time it was done by the mafia. i -- i did not believe that it was the brothers.

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the menendez brothers trial was really the first big trial i covered. and it was a spectacle. >> it's like the crowds in the roman coliseum, you know? blood. they smell blood. >> when i first saw erik menendez walk into the courtroom my blood went cold,

because i had never seen someone who had murdered his parents before. and it really was the menendez case. >> and it was complex. and they said they did it because they'd been sexually abused. so the question, the question in the trial -- if you believe that they were sexually abused, does that lessen their responsibility for murder? >> it will be your job to decide what kind of killing this is. that depends on what you come to believe was the reason for the act. the only question in this case, is why did these killings occur? >> i didn't buy it at the start at all. i thought it was a total artificial construct, a gambit by a desperate defense to do something to save these guys from the -- from the death penalty. >> it will become apparent that this murder was unjustified and wholly premeditated. and that it was accomplished through a conspiracy into which lyle menendez entered with his

brother, and that but for a few mistakes they made, this was almost the perfect murder. >> i knew that we could prove that the menendez brothers killed their parents. but i also started thinking about, "okay, let's say i'm a sleazy defense lawyer and i'm gonna make up a defense. what defense would i make up?" and i said i think they're gonna fabricate a sexual abuse defense, because i can't think of any other reason why we're going to trial. and guess what. they did. >> erik menendez was the abused son of wealthy parents. >> leslie abramson was one of the -- one of the most unpleasant people i've ever had to cover. and yet i admired her, because she was ferocious for her client, not her clients, it was erik who was her client. >> he killed his parents because he could no longer endure their abuse and had to stop it. >> we never argued that child abuse is an excuse for murder. what we argued is child abuse creates a terrible fear. >> this is not a child abuse trial. this is a murder trial.

>> her reputation in the legal community was that she was a fighter who would go to the mat for her clients. but in the prosecutor's office, everyone told me, watch out for her. she will lie, cheat, and steal to win. >> the origin of this killing was a lifetime of abuse at the hands of those same parents. >> i think the strongest piece of evidence that we had, and certainly the most compelling for a prosecutor, were the crime scene photos and the way that they killed their parents. >> this is her before, and this is her after. and the problem for the defendants in this case is they can't explain adequately killing mom. they just can't do it. and i'd like you to look at those photographs and ask yourself -- >> the prosecutors did a great job of portraying these -- these two brothers who were clearly plotting a premeditated murder, and taking apart their story piece by piece. >> i also noticed that there was

a large portion of the back of his head was missing. >> it ejects the round of ammunition. >> and did you ask them why they killed their mother? >> they felt that they were putting the mother out of her misery. >> it ripped apart their stories and made them -- made them seem like petty liars covering up an appalling homicide. >> you came home and saw them shot? >> you were crying, correct? >> right. >> and at the same time you were lying while you were crying. is that correct? >> right. >> i think there was a near universal sense that, that this was going to be a sham defense, and that it was gonna be a joke. and then they got on the witness stands. >> what did you think was going to happen? >> i thought they were going ahead with their plan to kill us. >> i was just sitting on the couch with my hands in my head saying, "we're gonna die. we're gonna die. i can't believe this." >> their story was that they were afraid of their parents.

afraid that their parents were going to kill them. >> i mean, you're familiar with kids saying, "oh, my father's going to kill me." "oh, my parents are going to kill me." is that what you're talking about? >> no, no. dad was gonna kill us. >> i could not conceive of these strapping young men being in such terror that they had to kill their parents out of fear. so i didn't buy it. >> but they definitely needed that piece in order to get the self defense claim. >> we fired lots, you know, many, many times. and there were just glass, and you could hear things breaking and you could hear the ringing noises from the booms. it was the smoke from the guns. >> we learned that they went after kitty in the most horrible way. that they reloaded, and they came back to finish her off. and that they still shot her. and i -- and joe was shot so much so that he -- i learned he was decapitated.

>> now after you entered the den -- >> i was just firing as i went into the room. i just started firing. >> in what direction? >> in front of me. >> what was in front of you? >> my parents. >> erik testified she got up to run, and there was blood on the bottom of her shoe, inside the tread of her keds. and i think of -- i think of her and i think of -- she got up and ran because her kids came in with shotguns and started shooting. i cannot imagine. i mean, i just can't imagine anything like that. it's just so horrific. >> did you fire at the second figure? did you fire at the first figure? do you know if you fired at both, off to the side? >> i -- i don't know. i don't know. i just walked into the room, i just started firing, and i don't know. i didn't think about these things. i didn't think, "where was this, where was that." i just started firing. >> i remember, my dad coming forward in my direction, so he was standing. and i remember firing directly

at him. i believe he fell back. >> now, what was it that happened after the shooting ended? >> i heard a noise from my mom. >> and what was your reaction to that noise? >> i just ran out of the room. >> and what did you do after you reloaded? >> i ran around and shot my mom. >> where did you shoot her? >> i just reached over, and i shot her close. >> i thought that when lyle described the killing of his mother that a normal jury would find it reprehensible and convict him. he -- you know, we loved our mother. oh, yeah? really? you loved your mother? you blew her up. >> the prosecution was completely focused on the idea that erik and lyle menendez were greedy rich kids that had killed

their parents because they were in a hurry to inherit their money. >> why did you need to buy a rolex watch four days after your parents were killed? >> i didn't need to. >> you wanted to. >> well, what happened that day is that i was -- my uncles had talked to my brother and i, and that i think it was mainly my brother needed to get suits for the memorial service in l.a. that was coming up. and also for the one that they were planning around new jersey. >> so you just thought a $9,000, 18-karat gold rolex would go nicely with your funeral suit. is that right? >> and i thought that that was a very powerful part of the prosecution's case. it persuaded me. i mean, i didn't think they were in fear for their lives. i didn't. i thought they were trying to get away with murder. why they were murdering is what the question was. >> mr. menendez, you've heard the testimony of your brother that you and he killed your parents on august 20th, 1989. did you not? >> yes, we did. >> trials are storytelling competitions.

>> what do you believe was the originating cause of you and your brother ultimately winding up shooting your parents? >> so whoever tells the better story in a trial, that's anchored in the facts as they come out, that's who's going to persuade the jury. >> me telling -- >> you telling what? >> me telling lyle that -- >> you telling lyle what? >> and to do that, you don't just say, "this happened, this happened, this happened, this happened, this happened." you say, "here's this person. this is what their experience was. this is what they did, and this is why." >> your honor, can i ask a leading question? >> if you don't ask -- >> my dad --

>> he was in the process of answering. there's no need to ask it. >> can you answer the question? >> okay. it was you telling lyle what? >> that my dad had been mlesting me. >> you could hear a pin drop in the courtroom. and that's when i thought, "oh, oh, darn. i'm in trouble." ♪ it's because they rub against you creating friction. and your clothes rub against you all day. for softer clothes that are gentle on your skin, try downy free & gentle. just pour into the rinse dispenser and downy will soften your clothes without dyes or perfumes. the towel washed with downy is softer, fluffier, and gentler on your skin. try downy free & gentle. recognized by the national psoriasis foundation and national eczema association.

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television removes you from the intimacy of pain. to my dismay, the menendez brothers' trial became a gag on "saturday night live." >> would you please state your names for the record? >> lyle menendez. >> erik menendez. >> it became a game show because it was on television. >> and can you tell the court who did murder your parents? >> our other two brothers, danny menendez and

jose menendez jr. >> and they became cartoons in the public mind, right, with sweaters and the tears and all that stuff. it was easy for people to dismiss what they were claiming as an act. >> the first thing they did is they always dressed in pastels. and they always wore the little crewneck ralph lauren sweaters and the little polo shirts underneath to make them look like little easter egg candies. they were referred to all the time as the boys. not the brothers, not the adults. the boys. >> the boys. the boys. the boys. >> and it got to the point where i was saying "the boys" because it's a shorthand for the dirtbags over there who killed their parents." >> for 12 years, between the ages of 6 and 18, my client, erik menendez, was sexually molested by his father. >> the sex abuse defense -- the "abuse excuse" -- was new in --

in the law. and so people were very, very skeptical of it. >> sex abuse takes place in private. how can you prove it? who witnesses it? >> the greatest omission that occurred for the menendez brothers, in terms of whether this happened or not, was their failure to tell this to their own psychotherapist. >> when erik menendez was 10 years old, he told his cousin andy cano that he had been sexually molested by his father. >> well, he told me his father was massaging his [ bleep ]. >> he used that word? >> yes, he did. he wanted to know that -- if this happened to every kid. i do remember very specifically was him asking me to make a promise to him never to reveal that to anybody. >> it's hard to explain that away, and then when their own testimony came in it was, it was very, very powerful. >> and between the ages of 6 and 8, did your father have sexual contact with you? >> yes.

>> and how did it start? >> we would have these talks, and he would fondle me and he would ask me to do the same with him, and i would touch him, and we would undress. >> when lyle appeared, it was a turning point because now you were hearing a whole different side of the story and details that no one had ever really heard before. >> we would be in the bathroom and -- it would -- he would put me on my knees and he would guide me, all my movements and i would have oral sex with him. >> the days that lyle and erik menendez testified to their claims of sexual abuse are among the most unforgettable days i've ever had as a journalist. >> what else did he do to you?

>> he used objects. >> what kind of objects? >> a toothbrush, and some sort of shaving utensil brush. >> and did he try to anally penetrate you with something else? >> he did. >> and what was it? >> he'd rape me. >> there was a level of >> there was a level of detail that people remember from real life that you almost wouldn't kind of make up. >> did you tell your brother? >> no. >> did you do something to your brother? >> yes. >> what did you do to your brother?

>> i took him out to the woods, whenever i felt -- i don't know. i took him out sometimes and i took a toothbrush also and i played with erik in the same way. and i'm sorry. >> and he says it with such shame. but what is even more convincing -- and i was sitting- saw this vein start popping out of his forehead as he hears his brother apologizing, as their own secret horrible sordidness comes out into public on television.

>> were you scared? >> very. >> did you ask h t >> yes. >> how did you ask him not to? >> i just told him, i don't -- i'm sorry. i just told him that i didn't want to do this and that it hurt me. and he said that he didn't mean to hurt me and he loved me. >> people in the audience were crying. press members were crying, were dabbing at their eyes. they hear everything, but they were crying.

>> frankly, i think their bad acting when they're trying to convince everybody that they were actually in fear for their lives when they killed their parents, shows that they weren't pretending when they were casting themselves back to their experience as -- as little boys and being raped. >> did you have some hope over that summer of 1989 for some improvement in your life? >> yes. >> and what did you expect? >> i was gonna go to college. >> how significant a notion was this? >> it was the most important thing in my life. it was everything in my life. it was all i thought about. >> why was it all you thought about? >> why was it all i thought about? >> yeah. >> because it would end the sex, and that's all i thought about. >> how did you feel at 18 about the fact that your father was having sex with you? >> i hated it. i hated it. i hated it. >> you slept in bed with your mom a lot, didn't you? even when you were little? >> yes.

>> and did you continue to sleep in her bed around this time when you're 11 and 12? >> sometimes. >> and sometimes did you touch your mom? >> yes. >> and where would you touch her? >> everywhere. >> the idea that erik and lyle were abused by my sister kitty is absolute insanity. >> i thought that was pretty gratuitous and -- and just thrown in as an example of how awful the parents were. that -- that kitty deserved to die too because she was complicit. because the problem from their point of view was jose was a jerk, but what do you do with the mother? >> if he hadn't killed his mom, and i always think that he might have got away with it. because your mother would have stood by you. she would have stuck up for you to save your life. >> killing your parents is

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the whole abuse excuse was a lie. >> i don't think children kill their parents willy-nilly. >> i compare a closing argument in a high profile case to game seven in a world series. there's an electricity that's literally floating in the air. it is unbelievably exciting. >> you heard about some of the things that he liked to do to his little boy. >> this is not a hard case at all. this is what happened. these two people were sitting there, watching television, and they got slaughtered by their sons. >> and one of them was to stick tacks, like this, in his thighs and in his butt. >> at the end of the day, this trial came down to, did you believe them? >> i remember thinking, he's either the best actor in the world or this is a true story. >> these two terrorist parents built two bombs that blew up and killed them. >> it became like a rorschach test. you looked at lyle menendez,

erik menendez, you either saw cynical, sinister, vicious killers or you saw victims. >> i mean, this is a jury trial. it's only gonna take one juror to hang this up. can we get all 12? >> the court declares a mistrial, and that completes this hearing. >> jurors have told the jury they are unable to reach a verdict. hopelessly deadlocked. >> the general public was screaming on talk radio. they said, "the brothers admitted they did it. what's wrong with those jurors? what's wrong with this judge? why couldn't they get a conviction?" >> we are going to be trying the case a second time. >> round two, second time around with this case, it was a different ball game for a lot of reasons. numbe one, the judge banned cameras in the court. and the judge, to some degree, said certain defense evidence, i'm just not going to allow it.

>> so he reversed all his evidence rulings and the jurors never heard anything about the family history and several jurors that i interviewed after the second trial told me, if they had heard that family history, they would never have voted for murder. >> there were a lot of people who donated their time and their expertise for free to the retrial in the menendez case, because people were so outraged at the jury hanging. >> at the end of the first trial, the menendez family was broke. >> and in the second trial, both the brothers had their attorneys' fees paid for by the people of the state of california. >> i knew they were going to get convicted the second time around because of the outrage around the first trial. i thought, look, good luck getting away with it now. >> lyle and erik menendez have been found guilty of murdering their parents. it took a second trial for the two to be convicted of murder in the first degree. >> the brothers barely reacted. both slumped a little. erik looked at a relative to say it will be okay and exchanged looks with his brother. >> we believe that most people in this county, perhaps even in this country, now believe that there was justice in this case. >> i thought that justice had

been done in a legal sense, because i do think they, obviously, they killed their parents, and they failed to prove that they were in fear for their lives and therefore justified in doing so. but i thought that the fact that they'd become laughingstocks around their claim of sexual abuse was an injustice, a moral injustice. >> what went through your minds when you heard that verdict? first-degree murder, guilty. >> that i was going to spend the rest of my life in prison without any possibility of ever getting released. >> some people might say, "they should be punished as much as possible." what do you say to that? >> we will spend the rest of our life in prison. if we're not put in the same prison there's a good probability i will never see him again. that i -- there's some things that you cannot take and there's some things that you can endure.

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...and you... erik and lyle menendez were

18 and 21 at the time that they killed their parents. at the height of the interest in the trial, both lyle and erik menendez were receiving over 1,000 letters a week from people from all over the world. and they developed close friendships with the two women they married. >> why on earth would you change your whole life for erik menendez? >> he's the most sensitive, kind, i mean, he's just, he's always there for me. he worries. you know, i -- i never had that before. >> you realize, with all due respect, that a lot of people think you're nuts? >> oh, yes. i've heard it before many times. >> if i just say to you, why, what do you say? >> my answer to that is i fell in love with him unexpectedly, and it's quite a long journey that led me to there. >> have you ever had sex with erik? >> no. we can hug and kiss on the way out, and hold hands during the visit. and the holding of the hands during the visit is everything.

>> i can't offer her most of the things that another husband can, in terms of being with her physically. what i can offer her is -- is unconditional and complete devotion and love. she is everything to me. >> lyle menendez developed a friendship with a woman named anna erickson. >> i hope that we can get married someday soon. even though it's a very limited relationship because of where we are, the exchange of love and sharing, it keeps you in touch with yourself and softer. otherwise, you can become very hard and cold in here. >> some day it might be possible for you to have children. do you want to? >> i would very much like to have a family. i would feel concern for the pressures that would be on children having me as a father or erik as a father.

but an opportunity to live, give differently, and give them love and just, sort of, maybe it's a way of trying to correct some of the things that happened to us. i don't know. >> the marriage lasted about a year, and then lyle menendez married a second time to a woman who had been a pen pal, and they have a very close bond. >> one thing i've learned is that your physical comfort is much less important than your connection with the people around you and in your life that are important to you. i've found i can have a healthy marriage that is complicated and built around conversation and finding creative ways to communicate, sharing without any of the props that are normally there in marriage. >> last october my

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even after all these years, i still don't understand why a lyle and an erik could have done that. >> something happened during the course of their childhood that turned them into murderers. >> you cannot escape those memories. those ghosts, they never leave you. they always haunt you. there's a part of me that says i need to get past my childhood. no matter how painful it is.

it's just part of the fabric of who i am. >> i have thought since the trial that if the menendez brothers were the menendez sisters they would be free today. we don't want to think, "oh, boys get raped by their father." >> so that's why people are so outraged, because they treated like this was impossible, like this was the narrative. >> that's why people are so angry. that is not okay. >> i think society has evolved a great deal in the past 27 years. people are aware that these things do happen within families. >> people of my generation predominantly believe it was an act of self-defense. >> i think they're seen as the victims of a less enlightened time.

it's a moral crusade. it's an attempt to right a wrong. >> i don't believe they got a fair trial. >> this case is so deep and complex that they don't deserve to live the rest of their lives in prison. >> you've seen social media campaigns to get certain people freed from jail that have been successful. >> i think they've gone through enough and it's time they come home. >> they envision a future where the brothers are not in jail. and they do see that as within their capacity to somehow effect that. >> i think this is a positive trend in the sense that we should always be re-examining our systems but i also think it can be a little bit dangerous. when you have somebody that is a convicted criminal that develops a fan base online, sometimes that fan base can be blind to their crimes and the harms that they've caused. so i think that's where the danger comes in. >> this call and your telephone number will be recorded. >> prison is not a relaxed environment. you feel that loss of freedom deeply.

i feel like there's still a lot of purpose in life, even in confineme confinement, if you want it. i've pretty much just poured my energies into helping quality of life here, helping people with their rehabilitation goals. >> both erik and lyle menendez have become contributing members of their prison community. >> i'm a more fully formed adult now. it seems unimaginable because it seems so far removed from who i am and who i was. i don't know what helps people survive it better than others. and to a degree i don't feel like i did. i mean, is there that much difference betwemi ats suicills his parent and fe in p? it's a failed, destructive ending. that's part of the tragedy of it. it could so easily had not have happened.

>> that is "20/20" for tonight. thanks for watching. i'm david muir. >> and i'm amy robach. from all of us at abc news, thanks for watching, and have a great night.

i'm not sure if there's anything i can say to my family members to convince them to take the covid-19 vaccine. i'm not even sure if i'm convinced. hi darius, i think that people respond more to what we do than what we say. so after looking at all the data and the science about these vaccines, i got the vaccine. and i made sure my mom and dad got the vaccine. because these vaccines are safe. ♪ ♪