How could anyone forget the infamous Menendez brothers? They were the first televised court room drama when Court TV first began. As we all know, they gunned down their parents, then lived a lavish life after their parents were "murdered" by "unknown killers".
Their first trial ended in a mistrial. Their second trial ended in the jury convicting both brothers of first degree murder. Their sentence? Life in prison.
The Gruesome Story
Erik Menendez sat and watched the made-for-TV miniseries based on real life events that told the story of a group of young men from Beverly Hills who planned and carried out two murders, including the killing of the father of one of the members of the group. Erik called to his older brother, Lyle who joined him and watched the "Billionaire Boys Club."
Later, they began to discuss killing their father. Each complained to the other about how domineering and controlling their father was, how impossible it was for either brother to please him, how he planned to disinherit both brothers from his will and how poorly he treated their mother. The brothers rationalized that if they killed their father, they would have to kill their mother because she could not survive emotionally without their father. She could also be a living witness to the crime they were about to commit.
The older brother, Lyle, wanted to plan the murders so that they would be as "perfect as could be," but the younger brother could not wait and insisted that the murders take place as soon as possible. The miniseries was shown over two nights, July 30 and 31, 1989, and the murders occurred on the night of August 20, 1989.
The evening of Sunday, August 20, 1989, the $4 million, 23-room Mediterranean-style mansion at 722 Elm Drive was quiet. TJose and Kitty Menendez were in the family room dozing while a James Bond thriller, The Spy Who Loved Me, played on the VCR. The couple’s sons, Lyle, 21, and Erik, 18, had gone out for the evening.
The boys entered the home through the french doors in the study. They walked down the hallway toward the family room, located in the back of the house. The boys entered the family room, which was illuminated only by the light coming from the television screen. Jose was dozing on the tan leather couch, Kitty was lying under a blanket, her body stretched out across the couch, her head in Jose’s lap. One of the boys pointed his twelve-gauge shotgun at the couple and squeezed the trigger.
Two shots were fired at Jose, one pellet struck Jose in the left elbow; another struck him in the right arm, followed by another. The shots immobilized Jose. One of the boys walked behind Jose and placed the shotgun against the back of his head and fired.
After the first shots were fired at Jose, Kitty became alert. She woke up to find herself spattered by Jose’s blood and body tissue. Kitty stood and began to turn away from her attackers, taking a step or two before being shot in the right leg near her calf and in her right arm. She struggled to stand again and tried to regain her balance, but she slipped as she stepped into her own blood.
Now that she was on the floor, her killers fired indiscriminately, riddling her body with shotgun pellets. Kitty was hit in the left thigh from a range that was so close that the paper wadding that contained the pellets caused her leg to break. She was shot in the right arm, then the left breast, which perforated her left lung. A quart of her blood flowed into her chest cavity.
Kitty was not dead. She continued to breathe and tried to crawl away from where she fell, but could not. The boys were out of ammunition and ran to the car to get more. They reloaded their shotguns and placed the shotgun against Kitty’s left cheek and fired. Kitty’s body was shot ten times. Her head had been struck four times. Her skull was shattered.
The final act the boys performed was to carefully gather the shell casings from the spreading pools of blood that now covered the couch, floor and rug under the coffee table.
At 11:47 p.m. on August 20, 1989 a 911 call was received at the Beverly Hills Police Department.
A minute or so later, Michael Butkus, a Beverly Hills police officer, and his partner, John Czarnocki, arrived at 722 Elm Drive. After walking around the outside of the mansion the police officers heard screaming and watched as the two boys ran past them and fell to their knees on the grass between the sidewalk and street. Over and over again they shouted, "Oh my God, I can’t believe it!" The two cops tried to get information out of the men, but the younger one was irrational, running around and trying to ram his head into a tree. The older one was trying to restrain and calm the younger one.
When Detective Les Zoeller arrived he noticed that nothing had been stolen from the mansion. It appeared as thought the victims were acquainted with their killers and Zoeller noticed that there was no forced entry into the home. During the questioning, Erik became distraught. He began to sob and was unable to sit still. Lyle was under control and answered questions methodically. After twenty minutes, the questioning ceased because Erik broke down uncontrollably.
The brothers said they left home around 8:00 p.m., to see "Batman". The brothers told the police that when they returned home, they noticed smoke in the house, especially in the family room. This seemed odd to Zoeller because Butkus and Czarnocki had not seen anything like that. Edmunds asked Lyle who hated his parents enough to want to kill them. Edmunds was surprised when Lyle answered "maybe the mob."
Lyle and Erik staged an elaborate memorial service for Jose and Kitty on August 25, 1989. Lyle and Erik arrived one hour late. Erik looked uncomfortable, and his face was red and swollen. Lyle appeared calm and cool. On August 28, 1989, a traditional church service was held at the university chapel in Princeton.
At the service, Lyle spoke for thirty minutes and recalled how much Jose and Kitty had meant to him. Erik was too upset to speak. Their parents’ murders affected Lyle and Erik differently. Erik was unsure whether to begin attending UCLA or devote himself to tennis. Lyle seemed more focused. He decided against continuing with his college education and began to plan for a career in business.
Four days after the murders, the brothers began a spending spree. The brothers' shopping sprees were funded by Jose’s personal life insurance policy of $650,000. The brothers spent money on new cars, designer label clothes and jewelry. Three days after the murders, the brothers spent $15,000 on Rolex watches and money clips.
The brothers decided that they could not stay in the Beverly Hills mansion. The brothers told their friends that they moved from hotel to hotel because they feared that the same mobsters who murdered their parents would come after them. Lyle hired bodyguards to travel with him for several weeks after the murders. Lyle’s bodyguards were alarmed when Lyle would jump out of the limousine before it came to a complete stop to shop and spend money. On one occasion, the bodyguards watched as he purchased $24,000 in stereo equipment.
The brothers' shopping sprees continued. Lyle decided that he had to have a new car. The red Alfa Romeo that his parents had purchased for him as a high school graduation present and that he never liked had to go. The Alfa was replaced by a much more expensive gunmetal gray Porsche 911 Carrera that cost $64,000. Erik traded in his Ford Escort for a Jeep Wrangler. By October 1989, Lyle had charged more than $90,000 to Jose’s American Express card.
Zoeller and the rest of the Beverly Hills investigators watched as the brothers threw money around. Kitty and Jose were murdered on August 20, 1989 and by the end of the year, Lyle and Erik had spent more than a million dollars. The police now suspected that the brothers were behind the murders. Although Erik appeared cool and calm to Zoeller during the interview, Erik was shaken to his core. As soon as the interview was concluded, Erik called Lyle in Princeton. He couldn’t reach him.
Erik called his psychotherapist, Jerome Oziel. Erik saw Oziel on October 31. During the session, Erik said, "We did it. We killed our parents."
Oziel would later testify in court that the brothers "looked at each other and said, ‘We’re sociopaths.’" Lyle then erupted in anger. He threatened Oziel and told Oziel that if he told anyone he would kill him too. On November 2, the brothers met with Oziel again. Lyle threatened Oziel again, telling him that he and Erik had considered killing him in order to keep their secret.
Oziel made notes and tape recordings of his sessions with the brothers. On March 5, 1990, the detectives received a break in the case from a woman named Judalon Smyth. Smyth was a woman who owned an audiotape duplicating business. She told the detectives that Oziel had asked her to eavesdrop on a therapy session he had with the Menendez brothers on October 31, 1989.
Smith told the detectives she overheard a shouting match between Lyle and Erik in which Lyle shouted, "I can’t believe you told him!" "We’ve got to kill him and anyone associated with him." According to Smyth, Erik screamed back, "I can’t stop you from what you have to do, but I can’t kill any more." The session ended when Erik ran out of the office sobbing. Smyth saw Lyle leave the office, followed by Dr. Oziel. Smyth told the detectives that she witnessed Lyle threaten Oziel. Smyth said she heard Lyle say, " I can kind of understand Erik, but he shouldn’t have done this..."
On June 9, 1993, defense attorneys Abramson said the defense would admit that the brothers had murdered their parents. The defense would try to prove to the jurors that it was Jose and Kitty and not Lyle and Erik who should be held accountable for why the murders were committed. Abramson and Lansing would argue that the brothers had been instilled with feelings of fear over a long period of time, going back many years.
On July 17, 1993, three days before the trial started, Leslie Abramson gave an interview to the Los Angeles Times. Abramson said that a series of increasingly intense confrontations between the brothers and their parents had led to the murders. During the interview, Abramson laid out her case which would primarily consist of the defense destroying the image of the Menendez family. Abramson and Jill Lansing followed Mones’ advice and dressed their clients in boyish sweaters, sport shirts and khaki pants all in an effort to show that Erik and Lyle were not men of 22 and 25, but boys of twelve and fifteen.
Throughout the trial she picked lint off his sweater and she made sure to keep her arm on his shoulder whenever she whispered into his ear. By behaving in this way, Abramson implied that she was not defending a murderer. Aside from the attorneys and the judge, there was one more entity in the trial: a television camera. Judge Weissberg allowed a single television camera in the courtroom. Weissberg was aware of the intense public interest in the case and the limited number of seats available in his courtroom, so he allowed Court TV to provide a television camera and broadcast the trial.
The Menendez brothers spent three years in the Los Angeles County Men's Jail waiting for their trials to begin. The brothers were segregated from other prisoners and housed in separate cells in the jail's 7000 section. This section housed high-profile inmates such as Richard Ramirez, known as the Nightstalker, and O.J. Simpson. They ate their meals in their cells and had an exercise period for one hour three times a week. During the first months of his confinement, Erik was suicidal and received the tranquilizer, Xanax.
A priest visited Erik during this time and Erik began to reveal for the first time some of the supposed traumas he suffered during his childhood. It was from these conversations that the foundation was laid for the brothers’ controversial defense. In June 1990, Erik began weekly therapy sessions with Dr. William Vicary, a Harvard-trained psychiatrist. Shortly after the sheriff’s deputies found Lyle’s ankle chains almost cut through, they conducted an inspection of both Lyle and Erik’s cells.
They found a seventeen-page letter from Lyle to Erik along with some notes in Erik’s cell. The notes described plans to travel to South America and then to the Middle East. The deputies also found a drawing of a building with stairwells and doors. Deputies tried to match it to the courthouses that Lyle had been in, but could not find a building that the drawing resembled.
The trial began on July 20, 1993 with Bozanich’s opening statement laying out the case against Lyle. Bozanich described the brutality of the murders: Bozanich would often remind the jurors throughout the trial that if Lyle and Erik could lie so frequently and in such detail to avoid being caught, they could also lie about child abuse to avoid death sentences. Bozanich told the jury about the brothers’ spending sprees.
Lansing told the jury that neither brother had talked about the abuse until after they had been arrested and incarcerated for many months because their shame was so great. The brothers had told a family member about the abuse and that family member had told the defense attorneys. The prosecution was always suspicious of how the abuse was revealed. The prosecutors felt that the timing was curious and that the brothers rehearsed their stories with each other before telling members of their family.
On January 13, 1994, after 16 days of deliberation, Erik’s jury announced that it was deadlocked and unable to reach agreement on any of the counts. On January 25, after deliberating for 24 days, Lyle’s jury announced that it was deadlocked. Judge Weissberg declared mistrials in both cases. The outcomes of the cases were a victory for the defense.
The second trial began in August 1995. In April 1995, Judge Weissberg ruled that the brothers would be retried together, in front of a single jury. Weissberg ruled that the advantages of a "single trial greatly outweigh the potential prejudice." On February 29, closing arguments ended with Conn telling the jury that Lyle and Erik blamed their victims, put their parents on trial, created a clever abuse excuse and told many lies in order to justify shooting their parents.
On March 20, after four days of deliberation, the jury convicted the Menendez brothers each of two counts of first degree murder, as well as conspiracy to commit murder. Jurors also found that there were two special circumstances attached to the murders: lying in wait and multiple murder.
The penalty phase began on March 22, 1996 and was completed in three weeks. On July 2, 1996, Judge Weissberg sentenced Lyle and Erik Menendez to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Judge Weissberg sentenced the brothers to consecutive sentences for the murders and the charge of conspiracy to commit murder.
Later, they began to discuss killing their father. Each complained to the other about how domineering and controlling their father was, how impossible it was for either brother to please him, how he planned to disinherit both brothers from his will and how poorly he treated their mother. The brothers rationalized that if they killed their father, they would have to kill their mother because she could not survive emotionally without their father. She could also be a living witness to the crime they were about to commit.
The older brother, Lyle, wanted to plan the murders so that they would be as "perfect as could be," but the younger brother could not wait and insisted that the murders take place as soon as possible. The miniseries was shown over two nights, July 30 and 31, 1989, and the murders occurred on the night of August 20, 1989.
The evening of Sunday, August 20, 1989, the $4 million, 23-room Mediterranean-style mansion at 722 Elm Drive was quiet. TJose and Kitty Menendez were in the family room dozing while a James Bond thriller, The Spy Who Loved Me, played on the VCR. The couple’s sons, Lyle, 21, and Erik, 18, had gone out for the evening.
The boys entered the home through the french doors in the study. They walked down the hallway toward the family room, located in the back of the house. The boys entered the family room, which was illuminated only by the light coming from the television screen. Jose was dozing on the tan leather couch, Kitty was lying under a blanket, her body stretched out across the couch, her head in Jose’s lap. One of the boys pointed his twelve-gauge shotgun at the couple and squeezed the trigger.
Two shots were fired at Jose, one pellet struck Jose in the left elbow; another struck him in the right arm, followed by another. The shots immobilized Jose. One of the boys walked behind Jose and placed the shotgun against the back of his head and fired.
After the first shots were fired at Jose, Kitty became alert. She woke up to find herself spattered by Jose’s blood and body tissue. Kitty stood and began to turn away from her attackers, taking a step or two before being shot in the right leg near her calf and in her right arm. She struggled to stand again and tried to regain her balance, but she slipped as she stepped into her own blood.
Now that she was on the floor, her killers fired indiscriminately, riddling her body with shotgun pellets. Kitty was hit in the left thigh from a range that was so close that the paper wadding that contained the pellets caused her leg to break. She was shot in the right arm, then the left breast, which perforated her left lung. A quart of her blood flowed into her chest cavity.
Kitty was not dead. She continued to breathe and tried to crawl away from where she fell, but could not. The boys were out of ammunition and ran to the car to get more. They reloaded their shotguns and placed the shotgun against Kitty’s left cheek and fired. Kitty’s body was shot ten times. Her head had been struck four times. Her skull was shattered.
The final act the boys performed was to carefully gather the shell casings from the spreading pools of blood that now covered the couch, floor and rug under the coffee table.
At 11:47 p.m. on August 20, 1989 a 911 call was received at the Beverly Hills Police Department.
Dispatcher: Beverly Hills emergency.
Lyle Menendez: Yes, police, uh...
Dispatcher: What’s the problem?
Lyle: We’re the sons (caller begins to sob)…
Dispatcher: What’s the problem? What’s the problem?
Lyle: (Still crying) They shot and killed my parents!
Dispatcher: What? Who? Are they still there?
Lyle: Yes.
Dispatcher: The people who...
Lyle: No, no.
Dispatcher: They were shot?
Lyle: Erik, man, don’t.
Dispatcher: (Talking over the background sounds of screams and Lyle shouting, "Erik, shut up!") I have a hysterical person on the phone. Is the person still there?
Second Dispatcher: What happened? Have you been able to figure out what happened?
Lyle: I don’t know.
Second Dispatcher: You came home and found who shot?
Lyle: My mom and dad.
First Dispatcher: Are they still in the house, the people who did the shooting?
Lyle: (Screaming) Erik! Get away from them!
Second Dispatcher: Who is the person who is shot?
Lyle: My mom and dad!
Lyle Menendez: Yes, police, uh...
Dispatcher: What’s the problem?
Lyle: We’re the sons (caller begins to sob)…
Dispatcher: What’s the problem? What’s the problem?
Lyle: (Still crying) They shot and killed my parents!
Dispatcher: What? Who? Are they still there?
Lyle: Yes.
Dispatcher: The people who...
Lyle: No, no.
Dispatcher: They were shot?
Lyle: Erik, man, don’t.
Dispatcher: (Talking over the background sounds of screams and Lyle shouting, "Erik, shut up!") I have a hysterical person on the phone. Is the person still there?
Second Dispatcher: What happened? Have you been able to figure out what happened?
Lyle: I don’t know.
Second Dispatcher: You came home and found who shot?
Lyle: My mom and dad.
First Dispatcher: Are they still in the house, the people who did the shooting?
Lyle: (Screaming) Erik! Get away from them!
Second Dispatcher: Who is the person who is shot?
Lyle: My mom and dad!
A minute or so later, Michael Butkus, a Beverly Hills police officer, and his partner, John Czarnocki, arrived at 722 Elm Drive. After walking around the outside of the mansion the police officers heard screaming and watched as the two boys ran past them and fell to their knees on the grass between the sidewalk and street. Over and over again they shouted, "Oh my God, I can’t believe it!" The two cops tried to get information out of the men, but the younger one was irrational, running around and trying to ram his head into a tree. The older one was trying to restrain and calm the younger one.
When Detective Les Zoeller arrived he noticed that nothing had been stolen from the mansion. It appeared as thought the victims were acquainted with their killers and Zoeller noticed that there was no forced entry into the home. During the questioning, Erik became distraught. He began to sob and was unable to sit still. Lyle was under control and answered questions methodically. After twenty minutes, the questioning ceased because Erik broke down uncontrollably.
The brothers said they left home around 8:00 p.m., to see "Batman". The brothers told the police that when they returned home, they noticed smoke in the house, especially in the family room. This seemed odd to Zoeller because Butkus and Czarnocki had not seen anything like that. Edmunds asked Lyle who hated his parents enough to want to kill them. Edmunds was surprised when Lyle answered "maybe the mob."
Lyle and Erik staged an elaborate memorial service for Jose and Kitty on August 25, 1989. Lyle and Erik arrived one hour late. Erik looked uncomfortable, and his face was red and swollen. Lyle appeared calm and cool. On August 28, 1989, a traditional church service was held at the university chapel in Princeton.
At the service, Lyle spoke for thirty minutes and recalled how much Jose and Kitty had meant to him. Erik was too upset to speak. Their parents’ murders affected Lyle and Erik differently. Erik was unsure whether to begin attending UCLA or devote himself to tennis. Lyle seemed more focused. He decided against continuing with his college education and began to plan for a career in business.
Four days after the murders, the brothers began a spending spree. The brothers' shopping sprees were funded by Jose’s personal life insurance policy of $650,000. The brothers spent money on new cars, designer label clothes and jewelry. Three days after the murders, the brothers spent $15,000 on Rolex watches and money clips.
The brothers decided that they could not stay in the Beverly Hills mansion. The brothers told their friends that they moved from hotel to hotel because they feared that the same mobsters who murdered their parents would come after them. Lyle hired bodyguards to travel with him for several weeks after the murders. Lyle’s bodyguards were alarmed when Lyle would jump out of the limousine before it came to a complete stop to shop and spend money. On one occasion, the bodyguards watched as he purchased $24,000 in stereo equipment.
The brothers' shopping sprees continued. Lyle decided that he had to have a new car. The red Alfa Romeo that his parents had purchased for him as a high school graduation present and that he never liked had to go. The Alfa was replaced by a much more expensive gunmetal gray Porsche 911 Carrera that cost $64,000. Erik traded in his Ford Escort for a Jeep Wrangler. By October 1989, Lyle had charged more than $90,000 to Jose’s American Express card.
Zoeller and the rest of the Beverly Hills investigators watched as the brothers threw money around. Kitty and Jose were murdered on August 20, 1989 and by the end of the year, Lyle and Erik had spent more than a million dollars. The police now suspected that the brothers were behind the murders. Although Erik appeared cool and calm to Zoeller during the interview, Erik was shaken to his core. As soon as the interview was concluded, Erik called Lyle in Princeton. He couldn’t reach him.
Erik called his psychotherapist, Jerome Oziel. Erik saw Oziel on October 31. During the session, Erik said, "We did it. We killed our parents."
Oziel would later testify in court that the brothers "looked at each other and said, ‘We’re sociopaths.’" Lyle then erupted in anger. He threatened Oziel and told Oziel that if he told anyone he would kill him too. On November 2, the brothers met with Oziel again. Lyle threatened Oziel again, telling him that he and Erik had considered killing him in order to keep their secret.
Oziel made notes and tape recordings of his sessions with the brothers. On March 5, 1990, the detectives received a break in the case from a woman named Judalon Smyth. Smyth was a woman who owned an audiotape duplicating business. She told the detectives that Oziel had asked her to eavesdrop on a therapy session he had with the Menendez brothers on October 31, 1989.
Smith told the detectives she overheard a shouting match between Lyle and Erik in which Lyle shouted, "I can’t believe you told him!" "We’ve got to kill him and anyone associated with him." According to Smyth, Erik screamed back, "I can’t stop you from what you have to do, but I can’t kill any more." The session ended when Erik ran out of the office sobbing. Smyth saw Lyle leave the office, followed by Dr. Oziel. Smyth told the detectives that she witnessed Lyle threaten Oziel. Smyth said she heard Lyle say, " I can kind of understand Erik, but he shouldn’t have done this..."
Grand Jury Indictment
On June 9, 1993, defense attorneys Abramson said the defense would admit that the brothers had murdered their parents. The defense would try to prove to the jurors that it was Jose and Kitty and not Lyle and Erik who should be held accountable for why the murders were committed. Abramson and Lansing would argue that the brothers had been instilled with feelings of fear over a long period of time, going back many years.
On July 17, 1993, three days before the trial started, Leslie Abramson gave an interview to the Los Angeles Times. Abramson said that a series of increasingly intense confrontations between the brothers and their parents had led to the murders. During the interview, Abramson laid out her case which would primarily consist of the defense destroying the image of the Menendez family. Abramson and Jill Lansing followed Mones’ advice and dressed their clients in boyish sweaters, sport shirts and khaki pants all in an effort to show that Erik and Lyle were not men of 22 and 25, but boys of twelve and fifteen.
Throughout the trial she picked lint off his sweater and she made sure to keep her arm on his shoulder whenever she whispered into his ear. By behaving in this way, Abramson implied that she was not defending a murderer. Aside from the attorneys and the judge, there was one more entity in the trial: a television camera. Judge Weissberg allowed a single television camera in the courtroom. Weissberg was aware of the intense public interest in the case and the limited number of seats available in his courtroom, so he allowed Court TV to provide a television camera and broadcast the trial.
First Trial:
The Menendez brothers spent three years in the Los Angeles County Men's Jail waiting for their trials to begin. The brothers were segregated from other prisoners and housed in separate cells in the jail's 7000 section. This section housed high-profile inmates such as Richard Ramirez, known as the Nightstalker, and O.J. Simpson. They ate their meals in their cells and had an exercise period for one hour three times a week. During the first months of his confinement, Erik was suicidal and received the tranquilizer, Xanax.
A priest visited Erik during this time and Erik began to reveal for the first time some of the supposed traumas he suffered during his childhood. It was from these conversations that the foundation was laid for the brothers’ controversial defense. In June 1990, Erik began weekly therapy sessions with Dr. William Vicary, a Harvard-trained psychiatrist. Shortly after the sheriff’s deputies found Lyle’s ankle chains almost cut through, they conducted an inspection of both Lyle and Erik’s cells.
They found a seventeen-page letter from Lyle to Erik along with some notes in Erik’s cell. The notes described plans to travel to South America and then to the Middle East. The deputies also found a drawing of a building with stairwells and doors. Deputies tried to match it to the courthouses that Lyle had been in, but could not find a building that the drawing resembled.
The trial began on July 20, 1993 with Bozanich’s opening statement laying out the case against Lyle. Bozanich described the brutality of the murders: Bozanich would often remind the jurors throughout the trial that if Lyle and Erik could lie so frequently and in such detail to avoid being caught, they could also lie about child abuse to avoid death sentences. Bozanich told the jury about the brothers’ spending sprees.
Lansing told the jury that neither brother had talked about the abuse until after they had been arrested and incarcerated for many months because their shame was so great. The brothers had told a family member about the abuse and that family member had told the defense attorneys. The prosecution was always suspicious of how the abuse was revealed. The prosecutors felt that the timing was curious and that the brothers rehearsed their stories with each other before telling members of their family.
On January 13, 1994, after 16 days of deliberation, Erik’s jury announced that it was deadlocked and unable to reach agreement on any of the counts. On January 25, after deliberating for 24 days, Lyle’s jury announced that it was deadlocked. Judge Weissberg declared mistrials in both cases. The outcomes of the cases were a victory for the defense.
Second Trial:
The second trial began in August 1995. In April 1995, Judge Weissberg ruled that the brothers would be retried together, in front of a single jury. Weissberg ruled that the advantages of a "single trial greatly outweigh the potential prejudice." On February 29, closing arguments ended with Conn telling the jury that Lyle and Erik blamed their victims, put their parents on trial, created a clever abuse excuse and told many lies in order to justify shooting their parents.
On March 20, after four days of deliberation, the jury convicted the Menendez brothers each of two counts of first degree murder, as well as conspiracy to commit murder. Jurors also found that there were two special circumstances attached to the murders: lying in wait and multiple murder.
The Sentencing
The penalty phase began on March 22, 1996 and was completed in three weeks. On July 2, 1996, Judge Weissberg sentenced Lyle and Erik Menendez to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Judge Weissberg sentenced the brothers to consecutive sentences for the murders and the charge of conspiracy to commit murder.
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